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The Stars Not Inhabited 

Scientific and Biblical Points 
of View 



BY 
Professor L. T. TOWNSEND, D.D., jS.T.D. 

Author of Credo, Art of Speech, Fate of Republic, Etc. 




NEW YORK -.EATON & MAINS 
CINCINNATI : JENNINGS & GRAHAM 






Copyright, 1914, by 
L. T. TOWNSEND 



SEP 24 1914 

©CI.A379638 






CONTENTS 

Page 
Forewords 9 

PART I 

SCIENTIFIC POINTS OF VIEW 

I. Opinions of Believers in Other Inhabited 

Worlds 19 

II. Physical Condition of Some of the Heavenly 

Bodies 23 

1. Comets 23 

2. Planetoids 24 

3. Dark Bodies 26 

4. Sun - 28 

5- Moon 33 

III. Physical Condition of Some of the Heavenly 

Bodies (Continued) 39 

1. Jupiter 39 

2. Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune 43 

3. Mars 46 

(1) Condition and Location 46 

(2) Early Observers of the Planet ..... 48 

(3) Later Observers and Their Opinions . . 50 

(4) Proposed Communication with the 

Planet 54 

4. Mars (Continued) 59 

(1) Spontaneous Generation and Evolution 

on Mars 59 

(2) Argument from Analogy Fatal to the 

Theory of Life on Mars 65 

(3) Conservatism and Misgivings of Advo- 

cates of Life on Mars ....... 73 

5 



5 Stars Xot Inhabited 

Page 

5. Mars (Continued) 76 

(1) Martian Canals 76 

a. Natural, Stipe rnatural, or Artificial . 77 

b. Phenomena 78 

c. Mountain Ranges on the Earth and 

Moon 82 

d. Charts and Observations of Mars not 

in Agreement 86 

(2) Objections to Canal Theory 90 

a. Difficulty in Forcing Water through 

the Canals 91 

b. Shape and Size of Martian Canals . . 93 

c. Small Amount of Water on Mars ... 97 

d. Halo and Other Illusions 99 

e. Play of the Imagination 105 

(3) Opinions of Scientists Opposed to the 

Canal Theory 106 

(4) Perplexities and Uncertainties . . . . 112 

(5) Other Recently Noticed Phenomena . . 117 

(6) A Last Chance 118 

(7) Saner Conclusions 119 

6. Mercury and Venus 121 

xV. Physical Condition of Some of the Heavenly 

Bodies (Continued) 126 

1. Other Suns and Their Supposed Planets . . .126 

(1) Some of the More Familiar Constellations, 126 

(2) Significant Facts as to the Stars . . . .131 

a. Double , Variable , and Temporary Stars, 131 

b. Number, Magnitude, and Distances . 135 

(a) Number • 135 

(b) Magnitude 136 

(c) Distances 138 

(3) The Universe and "The Two-Legged 

Midget" 138 

(4) Weight of Opinion 141 



Contents 7 

Page 
(5) Trend of Discovery Points to the Soli- 
tariness of Mankind in the Universe . .153 

PART II 
PHILOSOPHICAL AND THEOLOGICAL POINTS OF VIEW 
I. Ancient Beliefs 159 

1. Astronomy an Ancient Science 159 

2. Astrology an Ancient Science 161 

3. Belief in Other Inhabited Worlds Ancient . 161 

4. Unique Attitude of Bible Writers .... 162 

5. Questions Involved 163 

II. Stars Created for Mankind: Intellectual Stimu- 
lus 168 

1. Popular Objections and Difficulties .... 168 

2. Scientific Opinion Favorable to Bible Reve- 

lations 171 

3. Fitness of Things 177 

III. Stars Created for Mankind: Ethical and Re- 

ligious Intent; a Call to Worship . . . . 179 

IV. Bible Estimates 183 

1. Image of God 184 

2. The Commission an Exaltation 185 

3. The Eighth Psalm 189 

4. Venturesomeness of Bible Writers 194 

V. Scientific Estimates 198 

1. No Organized Physical Being Greater than 

Man 198 

2. Attainments 199 

(1) In Art and Science . . 200 

(2) In Righteousness 204" 

VI. Significance of the Command to Multiply . .206 

1. Awakened Interest 206 

2. Race Suicide 206 

3. Explicitness of the Command 208 

4. More than Economics Involved 208 






8 Stars Not Inhabited 

Page 
VII. Man Dethroned 211 

1. Evidence 212 

2. Bible Statement 213 

3. Mighty in His Dethronement 214 

VIII. Rationale 216 

1. Origin of Things 216 

2. Revelation 219 

3. Trinity and Christology 220 

4. God's Regard and Love for Man 224 

5. Interest of the Invisible World for Man . .226 

6. Sacrificial Atonement 226 

7. Moral Argument 229 

8. Heaven and Immortality 233 

IX. Notes 235 

X. Index 251 

XL Supplement 255 



FOREWORDS 

In harmony with what is termed the scientific 
method, the author's intention is to deal as far as 
possible with facts rather than with speculations. 
What are the known facts bearing on the subject, 
and what the rational inferences from them, are, 
therefore, the questions to be considered. 

The word " stars " as used in this discussion in- 
cludes all the heavenly bodies, — suns, planets and 
satellites. 

As compared with the star gazers of Chaldea, 
China, and Persia, though for the times in which 
they lived their achievements are not to be low- 
rated, modern astrophysicists have immense advan- 
tage. 

Stellar spectroscopy has discovered secrets as to 
the constitution and motion of the stars that have 
only very recently been made known. An ordinary 
glass prism, through which the child sees the colors 
of the rainbow in the sunlight, likewise draws out 
the star's light into a marvellous array of lines that 
indicate with unquestioned accuracy the sub- 
stances of w r hich stars are made. Many of these 
lines correspond exactly in position with lines ob- 
tainable from the same substances if burned in the 
laboratory. 



io Stars Not Inhabited 

When, therefore, the German astronomer, Kirch- 
hoff, saw the seventy dark lines of a sunbeam in 
the spectrum, he was perfectly safe in exclaiming, 
" There is iron in the sun." In the same way, 
when stars that are on the borders of creation, if 
there are borders, disclose in their spectrum certain 
lines, it is then made known beyond a doubt that 
those distant stars contain elements, seven at 
least, common to our earth. 

The spectroscope not only determines the com- 
position of the stars with as much accuracy as 
if they were samples of sand or clay brought into 
the laboratory of a chemist, but as the lines shift 
from side to side when the star is moving in a line 
with the earth, it also determines whether the star 
is approaching the earth or receding from it. 

The spectroscope reveals, likewise, the dis- 
tances of remote stars and with an exactness not 
attainable by the parallax calculations of the 
mathematician. 

Of so great importance is stellar spectroscopy at 
the present time that the observatory of Chicago 
University devotes nearly a third of the night hours 
to investigations in this field of research. 

But more than this: the eye being unable to 
catch and retain the many marvellous disclosures 
of the spectroscope, photographic plates are made 
available. The pictures thus taken can be studied 
leisurely, not only with the eye, but with the 
microscope, so that the achievements of photo- 



Forewords 



ii 



graphic astronomy are scarcely less a gain to the 
scientific world than those of spectrography. 

There are other instruments in every-day use 
that were scarcely dreamed of a half century ago. 
For instance, there is one for the measurement of 
the radiant heat of heavenly bodies whose delicate 
work is almost beyond belief. Professor Langley's 
bolometer is at present so far perfected that it will 
indicate the heat given out by a human face one 
third of a mile distant. 

From time to time there have been added to the 
observatory the micrometer, for computing angular 
distances; the heliometer, for estimating star dis- 
tances ; the photometer, for measuring the intensity 
of star light, and the pendulum, for making accu- 
rate time observations. 

And there are also contrivances by which the 
astronomer can now sit in his easy-chair and 
follow the flying stars as comfortably as if making 
microscopic observations of some object firmly held 
between plates of glass. 

It scarcely need be added that the telescope with 
its modern improvements has added immensely to 
the world's knowledge of the stellar universe. 
Galileo was first to construct an instrument for 
observing the stars (1609), called by him an " optik 
tube." It was little other than a small toy spy- 
glass. 

Among the later achievements in telescopic con- 
struction are, the Lord Rosse telescope (1845) at 



12 Stars Not Inhabited 

Parsonstown, Ireland, having a focal length of 
fifty- four feet, a tube diameter of seven. feet, and a 
mirror six feet in diameter, and likewise the re- 
cently completed telescope at the Mount Wilson 
Solar Observatory in California, with its one hun- 
dred inch mirror, where investigations especially 
as to the sun are among the most important the 
world over. 

This increase of knowledge, as would be ex- 
pected, does away with many speculations that 
held sway until the last of the last century. 

When, in former times, one called in question the 
announcements of astronomers as to the composi- 
tion, magnitude, and distances of the stars, the 
most effective reply that could then be made was 
that if the astronomer can foretell an eclipse hun- 
dreds of years before it takes place, and just when 
it will begin, end, and where visible, he must have 
some accurate knowledge of the heavenly bodies. 
This method of reasoning was for a long time the 
most forceful that could be employed in answering 
the cavils of the poorly informed skeptic. 

But now the doubter can be taken into the 
thoroughly equipped observatory, with its num- 
berless charts, chemical laboratory, photographic 
gallery, and other appliances of the astrophysicist, 
where he is confronted with evidence of a mastery 
of the starry heavens that was unknown a half 
century ago and that is silencing to all lips except 
those of a fool. 



Forewords 13 

As is well known, beginning with the dawn of 
philosophy, and continuing through many centu- 
ries, metaphysical conceptions of the universe were 
in high favor, though not always in agreement. 
But, beginning with Francis Bacon, the chief 
founder of modern inductive science, a new 
method of investigation and reasoning, that of 
reaching conclusions through the agency of estab- 
lished facts, came into such prominence that other 
methods for nearly three hundred years have been 
pronounced by most scholars unscientific. As a 
result there has been but little use for the meta- 
physician, at least in the scientific world. 

But of late scientists themselves have broken 
loose from inductive reasoning; their search for 
established facts has given place to the invention 
of creatures of their own imagination. The re- 
straints and sobriety of the scientists of half a 
century ago no longer characterize, especially the 
naturalistic scientific professors and writers of the 
last decade. While this has been noticeably true 
in works on evolution and in the recent announce- 
ments of some of our leading astronomers, yet 
these unscientific methods have lowered the tone 
in nearly every department of knowledge. 

Books, some of them school text-books, are by 
no means uncommon, even those by reputable 
authors, that announce the results of mere specu- 
lation as if they were well-established facts. The 
general public has thus often been grievously misled 



14 Stars Not Inhabited 

by utterances that are entirely destitute of scien- 
tific support. 

Our position, therefore, is that literature claim- 
ing to be scientific, but failing to distinguish 
between fact and fancy, should be severely dealt 
with. 

Prof. Louis T. More, in the Hibbert Journal 
(Oxford), with perfect correctness has recom- 
mended that scientists, if they would keep their 
standing in the world, must " confine their efforts 
to the legitimate function of science — the discov- 
ery of natural phenomena and their classification 
into general laws derived by logical mathematical 
processes." 

The author, therefore, will be pardoned for having 
called in question the methods employed by some 
popular scientific writers in their investigations of 
nature's phenomena and the very questionable 
conclusions announced by them. 

As to Bible revelation concerning matters under 
discussion, this should be said: that they, have 
been looked at from two very different points of 
view. Skeptical writers, scientists and theologians 
quite generally have agreed that the evidence is 
well-nigh conclusive that the stars are inhabited 
by beings who possibly are more highly endowed 
than ourselves of which the Bible says nothing; 
and that from almost every point of view man is 
only a speck in the universe instead of being of 
supreme importance, and a special, if not sole, heir 



Forewords i 5 

of the kingdom of heaven, as the Bible writers 
appear to teach. 

The skeptic cpntends that this ignorance of Bible 
writers is evidence of their unfitness to be guides 
and teachers of mankind. 

On the other hand, after raising many curious 
and irrelevant questions, such as these : Did the sin 
of Adam affect unfavorably intelligent beings else- 
where in the universe? Have they an inspired 
Bible on the planet Jupiter? and, Does the Atone- 
ment of Christ in this world avail for transgressors 
on Mars and Venus? and finding in the Scriptures 
no reply to these questions, Christian apologists 
have been accustomed to explain this silence and 
the alleged crude and unscientific conceptions of the 
Bible writers on the ground that they were author- 
ized to speak only of man's relation to this earth 
and that the Bible was not designed to be a treatise 
on astronomy or on any other scientific subject. 

But these apologetic replies to the critics never 
have been quite satisfactory to the more thought- 
ful people of Christendom who have taken the more 
consistent position that if the Bible is the word of 
God, it ought not to teach what is not true in sci- 
ence, philosophy, religion, or anything else, and 
ought not constantly to leave false impressions on 
the minds of its readers. 

It should be said, however, that a few writers 
on these subjects, while contending for a plurality 
of inhabited worlds, have also attempted to con- 



1 6 Stars Not Inhabited 

strue certain passages of the Bible in a way to give 
support to their views. (See Gen.- 2:1; Job 9 : 8, 9; 
Ps. 33 : 6; Is. 45 : 12, 18, 22; Neh. 9:6; Amos 
9:6.) 

But to the unprejudiced reader such texts afford 
not the slightest aid to the advocates of more 
worlds than one, except when methods of interpre- 
tation are employed that are forced and unjusti* 
fiable. 

In this treatise the effort will be to collect facts 
bearing on the subject from every available source 
and, whatever the consequences may be, to give a 
literal interpretation to Bible revelation, except 
when the figurative sense is manifestly intended. 

But, when scientific facts are all in and the Bible 
is correctly interpreted, there will be no conflict, is 
the author's abiding conviction. 

Our closing introductory word is this: that one 
cannot extend his investigations very far in any 
field of inquiry without making the discovery that 
all knowledge is correlated, and as theology very 
closely touches all branches of natural history, it 
need not surprise the reader that this brief treatise 
is both astronomical and theological. Nor is 
apology offered, since the ablest astronomers, with 
rare exceptions, are free to think and speak of 
an infinite Creator and Governor in the sidereal 
universe. 



Part I 

Scientific Points of View 



L OPINIONS OF THOSE WHO BELIEVE IN OTHER 
INHABITED WORLDS 

Off and on through the centuries there have 
been eminent scientists and philosophers who 
have advocated the theory that there are 
worlds, perhaps without number, that have 
upon their surface intelligent beings. 

Dr. Chalmers, Sir William and Sir John 
Herschel, Laplace, Prof. O. M. Mitchell, Sir 
Richard Owen, Isaac Taylor, M. Arago, and 
the still earlier scientists and philosophers, 
Bruno, Nola, Kepler, Tycho, and M. Fontenelle, 
adopted and strenuously contended for the 
opinion of many inhabited worlds, the last 
named being the first to write a treatise on the 
subject, "The Plurality of Worlds" (1686). ** 

No one will question the statement that the 
majority of astronomers and scholars, including 
the better educated clergymen, up to very near 
the present time, have been in agreement with 

* Notes in this volume are found in the appendix, and are indicated 
by the numerals I, II, III, etc. 

19 



20 Stars Not Inhabited 

the following statement of the well and favor- 
ably known astronomer, author of " Popular 
Astronomy/ ' " Reminiscences of an Astrono- 
mer,' ' " Side Lights on Astronomy/' and who, 
in mathematical astronomy, perhaps, had no 
superior, — the late Prof. Simon Newcomb : 

"It is perfectly reasonable to suppose that beings, 
not only animated but endowed with reason, inhabit 
the countless worlds in space." 

All who have inclined to this way of thinking 

may not have been quite as emphatic and 

enthusiastic as the French astronomer, M. 

Camille Flammarion, who, in his " Plurality of 

Inhabited Worlds " (1862), after depicting the 

vastness of the physical universe, exclaimed : 

"Almighty God! How senseless we were to be- 
lieve that there is nothing beyond the earth and that 
our abode alone possesses the privilege of reflecting 
thy greatness and glory." 

Scientists were very few who as late as the 
middle of the last century ventured to take 
issue with the very distinguished writer, Sir 
David Brewster, who, in his book entitled 
" More Worlds Than One " (1854), announced 
his belief thus : 



Opinions 2 1 

11 Wherever there is matter there must be life ; 
life physical to enjoy its beauties, life moral to wor- 
ship the Maker, and life intellectual to proclaim his 
wisdom and his power; infinity of matter means 
infinity of life/' 

Recently, one of the most noted of English 

scientists, Sir Oliver Lodge, answering the 

question, " Are there beings higher in the scale 

of existence than man? " is reported to have 

made this reply : 

" Man is the highest of the dwellers of the planet 
Earth, but the earth is only one of many planets 
warmed by the sun. The sun is only one of a myriad 
of similar suns which are so distant that we hardly 
see them and group indiscriminately as stars. We 
may be sure that in some of the innumerable worlds 
circulating about distant suns there must be beings 
far higher in the scale of existence than ourselves. 
Indeed, we have no knowledge which enables us to 
assert the absence of intelligence anywhere.' ' 

Not long since the eminent American astron- 
omer of Pittsburg, Dr. John A. Brashear, ex- 
pressed to the author opinions almost identical 
with these of Sir David Brewster and Sir Oliver 
Lodge. 

But it will be found by the student of these 
subjects that at least until quite recently almost 



22 Stars Not Inhabited 

the only basis for the theory of living beings in 
other worlds is the improbability that the 
Creator would make and fill the universe with 
worlds upon worlds, many of which are of 
majestic proportions, and then place organized 
life upon only one of the smallest of their 
number. This reasoning for a time seemed un- 
answerable and held sway over the minds of 
nearly all thinking people. 



H. PHYSICAL CONDITION OF SOME OF THE HEAV- 
ENLY BODIES: COMETS, PLANETOIDS, DARK 
BODIES, SUN, AND MOON 

In taking issue with this popular theory and 
with the opinions of these very distinguished 
scientists, one may adopt the method of gradual 
approach. 

i. Comets 

It is positively known, even by school children, 
that comets which now and then appear in the 
heavens, covering at times an area of millions 
of miles, are exposed in their approach to the 
sun to a degree of heat twenty-five thousand 
times hotter than is ever known in our tropics, 
a heat in which no form of organized physical 
life could exist for half a minute; then they 
move off into spaces where freezing tempera- 
tures are such as defy scientific calculation. 
Certain is it, therefore, that the comets, large 
and magnificent as they sometimes are, were 
not created to support living organisms, nor 

2 3 



24 Stars Not Inhabited 

to frighten people, as was once thought to be 
the case. 

A distinguished scientist and astronomer thus 
states his faith : " We no longer regard the comet 
as a sign of impending calamity ; rather we look 
upon it as a beautiful visitor that comes to 
please and interest us, but never to threaten or 
distress/' 2 

If, therefore, the mission of the comet is to 
please and interest humanity, why is there not 
in this fact ground for a suspicion at least that 
the mission of some of the other heavenly 
bodies is " to please and interest humanity "? 

2. Planetoids 

At a very early date in the history of astron- 
omy it was discovered that the distances be- 
tween the planets of the solar system were 
characterized by a regular arithmetical pro- 
gression with one exception ; there was a breach 
in case of the distance between Mars and 
Jupiter. The numerical harmony, therefore, 
called for another planet between these two 
where none had been discovered. Towards the 



Planetoids 2 5 

close of the eighteenth century, and through an 
organized effort on the part of several leading 
astronomers, a search was instituted and re- 
warded by the discovery of several small planets, 
called planetoids, revolving between Mars and 
Jupiter. Dr. H. W. M. Olbers (1802) advanced 
the theory that these small bodies were the frag- 
ments or parts of a planet broken in pieces by 
some internal explosion, or by collision with a 
comet, a theory adopted by many of the thinkers 
of that period. Prior to January, 1853, twenty- 
three planetoids had been discovered and named. 
Herschel and Lardner appear to have thought 
that these planetoids may be the abode of life. 
Speaking of their smallness and the consequent 
feebleness of the force of gravitation, Herschel 
suggested that " on such planets giants might 
exist and those enormous animals which on 
the earth require the buoyant power of water 
to counteract their weight." And Prof. Diony- 
sius Lardner, a voluminous scientific writer 
and of high standing among his contemporaries, 
in his " Natural Philosophy and Astronomy " 
(1854) makes this statement: 



26 Stars Not Inhabited 

" Muscular power would be more efficacious on 
the planetoids than on the earth. Thus a man might 
spring upwards sixty or eighty feet and return to the 
ground, sustaining no greater shock than would be 
felt upon the earth in descending from the height of 
two or three feet." 

But as astronomers of late date have care- 
fully thought on these problems, taking into 
account the possible origin of the planetoids 
and their comparative minuteness, there is 
scarcely a dissent among them all from the 
opinion that the planetoids are entirely desti- 
tute of any form of organized life. 

For additional evidence of this view and a 
fuller explanation of the ethical purpose of the 
planets and planetoids, the reader is referred 
to the discussion concerning some of the larger 
planets (pp. 39-46). 

3, Dark Bodies 

In the midst of the universe of stars there 
have been discovered, by means of mathematical 
astronomy, what have been termed "dark bodies 
of stellar dimensions.' ' They can be called 
neither suns nor planets. Though of enormous 



Dark Bodies 27 

magnitude, supposedly irregular in shape, they 
are at such distances that they fail to emit light 
of their own sufficient to reach the earth, nor 
do they reflect from luminous bodies surround- 
ing them light of sufficient intensity to be 
noticeable by our astronomers. It is now gener- 
ally agreed, however, that these masses are in 
part the cause of the apparent variations in the 
brightness of some of the more brilliant stars, 
and have, perhaps, an important mission in the 
regulation of the clockwork of the heavens. 

The imagination of the earlier scientists and 
philosophers very easily pictured these huge 
masses of unshapely matter as the abode of 
doomed souls, where there is only " blackness of 
darkness." 

It seems late in the day to read the following 
words from Rev. Frederick Campbell, D.Sc. 
(New York Observer) : 

" To die and be saved is to be released from earthly 
confines and given a bounding freedom among the 
exalted beings with whom the starry universe teems. 
But to die and be lost is to be ' cast into outer dark- 
ness/ as the Saviour himself teaches. 

" And if it should be that astronomy has found 



28 Stars Not Inhabited 

heaven in the stars [which is far from being the 
case], it is not unreasonable to think of hell as located 
among those regions described by Professor Wallace as 
' dark patches in the heavens, where hardly any stars 
are visible, and those seen are projected on intensely 
dark background, a region beyond the outer limits 
of the starry universe. ' " 

But the age of these unsupported speculations 
is rapidly passing. The more rational conclusion 
deduced from analogy, and supported by the 
fact of enormous stellar regions known to be 
uninhabitable, makes it certain that science and 
philosophy must rule out of the list of inhabit- 
able worlds these aggregations of unmapped, 
undefined, and shapeless matter. At least the 
position is absolutely unassailable that no evi- 
dence whatever can be adduced in support of 
the theory that these colossal masses, called by 
Professor Newcomb " dark stars," are the abode 
of doomed souls or of organic life of any kind. 

4. The Sun 

The history of astronomy records the fact 
that there was a time when the sun was sup- 
posed to be the abode of life. The reasoning 
adopted was this: Man is a mote, the earth is 



The San 29 

another, while the sun is a million and four 
hundred thousand times larger than the earth, 
containing more than ninety-nine per cent of 
all the matter in our planetary system; it, 
therefore, would be irrational to suppose that 
it was placed in the heavens chiefly for the pur- 
pose of giving light and heat to our insignificant 
earth or of rendering some other service to 
humanity, especially since only one twenty- 
three millionth of its light and heat reaches the 
earth. 

Hence it was argued that underneath the 
fiery surface of the sun is a vaporous and non- 
luminous atmosphere; that beneath this is a 
solid surface affording a beautiful and in every 
way charming abode for intelligent organized 
life. 

Dr. Elliott, in 1787, sent a paper to the Royal 
Society, London, in which he argued that the 
light of the sun that comes to the earth proceeds 
from a dense and brilliant aurora, affording 
ample light to the inhabitants on the sun's sur- 
face and yet being at such distance aloft as not 
to annoy them ; that vegetation grows there as 



30 Stars Not Inhabited 

well or better than on the earth ; that there are 
water and dry land, hills and dales, rain and 
fair weather, and that the sun may, therefore, 
easily be conceived to be by far the most blissful 
habitation of the whole planetary system. 

Though some people thought at the time that 
the doctor was insane because of the writing 
of this paper, yet ten years later so distinguished 
a man as Sir William Herschel asserted that 
such views as those of Dr. Elliott were not only 
rational but probable. 

The following are the words of Sir William : 

" By analogical reasonings, assisted by telescopic 
views, which plainly favor the same opinion, we need 
not hesitate to admit that the sun is richly stored with 
inhabitants. ... It is difficult to believe that a globe 
of such magnificence, eighty-eight thousand miles in 
diameter, and upwards of one hundred times the size 
of our earth, should occupy so distinguished a place 
without intelligent beings to study and admire the 
grand arrangements which exist around them ; and it 
would be still more difficult to believe, if it is inhabited, 
that a domain so extensive, so blessed with perpet- 
ual light, is not occupied by the highest orders of 
intelligence." 

And Sir David Brewster as late as 1854 
adopted a similar method of reasoning: 



The Sun 3 1 

11 While the sun and the satellites are primarily 
intended for the great purpose which they obviously 
subserve, it is not unreasonable to suppose that they 
may also be the seats of life and intelligence." 



As unconvincing as this reasoning now ap- 
pears, it is quite as correct as is very much else 
that has been advanced in the name of science. 

The trouble, however, is that these specula- 
tions in no proper sense can be called scientific ; 
they are purely guesswork, with which the latest 
scientific investigations are beginning to play 
a destructive havoc. 

The evidence, as every one knows, is well nigh 
overwhelming that the sun is in no way fit for 
habitation, being inside and out, a globe of fire, 
whose heat is several million degrees hotter than 
the hottest of our atmospheres ; whose spots are 
not cooler than any of its fiery surface, but are 
centers of cyclones and whirlpools of ' ' hydrogen 
gas sucked down into a fiery maelstrom ' ' ; whose 
flames (hydrogen and helium gas) leap from its 
surface with a speed of ten thousand miles a 
minute, and to a distance of more than three 
hundred thousand miles, — flames that could 



32 Stars Not Inhabited 

reach around the earth twelve times without a 
break ; into which, if the earth should drop, there 
would be left no records ; its continents, forests, 
mountains, oceans, cities, and peoples, in less 
than sixty seconds, would all be cremated. 3 

The sane conclusion, therefore, is that the sun 
is uninhabitable and was placed in the heavens 
for some reason other than making it an abode 
for organized life. 

But its mission as now acknowledged by the 
scientific world is an indispensable and a 
worthy one. Light and heat, rain and dew, 
food for man and life for every living thing on 
earth, in the air and the sea, now depend upon 
the light and heat of the sun. 

More than this, the sun affords food for 
thought as well as food to eat. It has called 
forth the wonder and often the worship of the 
masses of mankind in all ages'; and its magni- 
tude, its attractive power, and the almost thrill- 
ing beauty of its corona during a total eclipse, 
with all it suggests, have awed into a kind of 
adoration the scientist and philosopher. 

Who, therefore, at the present time will say 



The Moon 33 

that these physical and ethical benefits that 
come from the sun to the earth and its inhabi- 
tants are not ample justification for its crea- 
tion, even if it should forever be without 
inhabitant ? 

5. The Moon 

One of the most companionable of the heav- 
enly bodies is the moon. Speaking from an 
astronomical point of view, it is not large, and is 
near, a sort of suburban world, upon whose 
surface are much ruggedness and many moun- 
tains, some of which are many miles in height ; 
whose shadows and craters make the dark spots 
that are convertible into the lady or the man 
in the moon, as one prefers to make out. 

It is scarcely surprising that superstitious 
people in all ages have thought the moon to be 
the abode of living beings. By some it was 
supposed to be inhabited by " immense crea- 
tures," in human shape or otherwise. 

Because of the devotion of the hare to Bud- 
dha, Hindoo legends located the palace of a very 
important personage, the king of the hares, on 
the moon. 



34 Stars Not Inhabited 

The Druids taught that the moon is the home 
of happy souls who at death are borne thither 
on a whirlwind. 4 

Not only Hindoos and Druids, but for cen- 
turies philosophers, scientists, and theologians 
had no hesitation in asserting that the moon is 
inhabited by intelligent beings. This was the 
opinion of Sir William Herschel and Sir David 
Brewster. Herschel reasoned that, ' * because the 
moon closely resembles the earth, it may be a 
suitable habitation for human beings/ ' The 
reasoning of Sir David was in his day, with but 
few dissenting voices, the accredited view among 
leading scientists: 

" Had the moon been destined to be merely a lamp 
to our earth, there was no occasion to variegate its 
surface with lofty mountains and valleys and extinct 
volcanoes and cover it with large patches of matter 
that reflect different quantities of light and give its 
surface the appearance of continents and seas. It 
would have been a better lamp had it been a smooth 
sphere of lime or of chalk. And, too, if it is probable 
that the moon is inhabited, the same degree of prob- 
ability may be extended to all the other satellites of 
the system. 

" Their great distance from the earth prevents us 
from examining their surface, but even without any 



The Moon 35 

indication of mountains and valleys, or of any forces 
that have disturbed, or are still disturbing, their 
surface, analogy compels us to conclude that, like all 
other material spheres, they must have been created 
for the double purpose of giving light to their primary 
planets and a home to animal and intellectual life." 

The dark spots were thought to be seas, like 
those on the earth, and were so mapped in the 
earlier drawings of the moon, and the dark lines 
were assumed to be rivers. 

But a better understanding of the internal 
character of the moon and of the physical condi- 
tions on its surface has converted the seas into 
lava beds and the rivers into waterless volcanic 
or moonquake fissures, and has led the scientific 
world to banish forever its inhabitants, " im- 
mense creatures," kings, and all the rest, to the 
realms of the imagination. Scientific support for 
those eighteenth century opinions is no longer 
sought for or thought of. 

It may be interesting to note that the moon 
is now so closely observed that were there a 
wheat field on its surface, the harvesting of the 
crop would be immediately noticed by the more 
powerful of our telescopes, as also would be the 



36 Stars Not Inhabited 

construction or devastation of a fair sized city. 
Or, should there be a volcanic eruption, or even 
a considerable forest fire, the watchful astrono- 
mer would see the smoke and give the alarm. 

But no wheat field is harvesting there ; no city 
is constructing or devastating; no volcanic 
smoke or smoke of forest fire is ever seen. The 
moon has no perceptible atmosphere, no grada- 
tions between the fiercest sunlight and blackest 
night ; no sound ever breaks its silence ; perhaps 
some ice is there, but neither flowing nor stag- 
nant water on its surface; no cloud, rain, dew, 
nor tempest. Nothing is to be seen but " a 
dreary waste, frozen hard as steel.' ' 

In a recent issue of the Cosmos (Paris), the 
French scientist, F. W. Very, made these state- 
ments as to the physical characteristics of the 
moon: 

" It seems nearly certain that a great part of the 
moon undergoes enormous daily variations of tem- 
perature. Its surface at midday, in the latitudes 
where the sun has reached a certain height, is probably 
hotter than boiling water, and there is probably 
nothing on earth that gives an idea of the unsheltered 
surface of our satellite at noon, except, perhaps, the 
most terrible terrestrial deserts where men and beasts 



The Moon 37 

die and where the sands burn the skin. Only the 
extreme polar latitudes have possibly a supportable 
temperature by day, while by night the inhabitants 
would have to become cave-dwellers to preserve them- 
selves from the intense cold that pre vails.' ' 

In a recent lecture on " The Evolution of 
Worlds," given in Huntington Hall, Institute 
of Technology, Boston, Prof. Percival Lowell 
stated that approximately the thermometer 
would register a variation of 650 degrees be- 
tween the moon's midday and her midnight, the 
range being 300 degrees below and 350 degrees 
above the zero mark. 

But it may be questioned whether the gener- 
ally accredited opinion as to the moon, taught 
in school text-books, and as presented by Very 
and Lowell, is in every way correct. Without, 
however, questioning the uninhabitability of the 
moon, the opinion that the moon's temperature 
differs much at any time or place on its surface 
is very doubtful, inasmuch as the energy of 
the sun's rays produces no heat until absorbed 
by an atmosphere. But the moon is without 
atmosphere. The lunar day is, therefore, prob- 
ably as cold as its nights, while the sun's rays 



38 Stars Not Inhabited 

on the moon are fiercely bright and would 
quickly blind the eyes of a human being, they 
are at the same time more frigid than icicles. 
Consequently, instead of a variation of 650 de- 
grees on the moon's surface, there is more likely 
an unbroken winter, year in and year out, with 
a temperature several hundred degrees below 
zero. 

Though the former reasoning and speculations 
as to the inhabitants on the moon must, there- 
fore, be abandoned, never again to be revived, 
still our beautiful satellite renders important 
service to humanity, is tenderly thought of and 
addressed by mortals. And at the present stage 
of scientific inquiry there will be, perhaps, no 
dissenting voice when it is said that the moon 
was made, as were the comets and the sun, not 
to be the abode of organized life, but to please, 
interest, and otherwise benefit humanity, and in 
doing this its ordained mission is accomplished. 
Like the Sabbath, it was made for man, not man 
for it, is the conclusion reached by an up-to-date 
and rational philosophy. 5 



in. PHYSICAL CONDITION OF SOME OF THE 
HEAVENLY BODIES (CONTINUED): JUPITER, 
SATURN, URANUS, NEPTUNE, MARS, MER- 
CURY, AND VENUS 

i. The Planet Jupiter 

The greatest of the planets, though not our 
nearest neighbor, is Jupiter, called " the giant 
planet.' ' 

Not so very long since scientific and literary 
people, including educated clergymen with 
scarcely an exception, reasoned that a good and 
wise Creator would not employ his time nor 
expend his energy in building an enormous 
world like Jupiter without putting upon its sur- 
face a correspondingly mighty people, in com- 
parison with whom the inhabitants of the earth 
are as grasshoppers, though it is a scientific fact 
that, owing to the laws of gravitation, the larger 
the planet, the smaller must be the people. 
Mars, if inhabited, is peopled with huge giants 
and Jupiter with pygmies. 

39 



40 Stars Not Inhabited 

Bode, Herschel, Madler, Owen, and other dis- 
tinguished scientists advocated essentially the 
views of Sir David Brewster, which in the trea- 
tise already mentioned were stated thus : 

" With so many striking points of resemblance be- 
tween the earth and Jupiter, the unprejudiced mind 
cannot resist the conclusion that Jupiter has been 
created, like the earth, for the express purpose of being 
the seat of animal and intellectual life. The atheist 
and the infidel, the Christian and the Mahometan — 
men of all creeds and nations and tongues — the 
philosopher and the unlettered peasant, have all 
rejoiced in this universal truth ; and we do not believe 
that any individual who confides in the facts of 
astronomy seriously rejects it. If such a person 
exists, we would gravely ask him for what purpose 
could so gigantic a world have been framed? 

" Why does the sun give Jupiter days and nights 
and }^ears? Why do its moons throw their silver light 
upon its continents and its seas? Why do its equa- 
torial breezes blow perpetually over its plains, unless 
to supply the wants and administer to the happiness 
of living beings? " 

Such were the confident assertions fifty years 
ago that Jupiter, like the earth, is thronged with 
living beings. 

But more recent investigations, especially 
by means of spectroscopes and telescopes of 



The Planet Jupiter 41 

greater power than those formerly in use, have 
played a tragedy with these speculations. 

Jupiter is found to be enveloped with gases, 
heated to a deadly intensity, its surface being 
swept by terrific tornadoes. The planet itself is 
a mass of fire-fluid, though with but slight if 
any illumination, bubbling and seething like 
boiling metal in the retort of an iron foundry. 
Nature appears to be in process of cooling 
the planet off by deluging it with water that is 
constantly thrown back in steam and vapor. 

While some of these conditions are such as to 
make Jupiter, when reflecting the sunlight and 
viewed from the earth, a most beautiful object, 
in brilliance next to Venus, they at the same 
time preclude beyond question the existence 
there of any form of organized and physical life 
now known or that can be conceived of in the 
realms of scientific inquiry. 

Prof. Richard Proctor, writing in 1885, and 
speaking of Jupiter, says: 

11 I examined the case of Jupiter, for instance, and 
found, indeed, abundant evidence to show that the 
planet is not the watery home of gelatinous monsters 
imagined by Dr. Whewell; but I found abundant 



42 Stars Not Inhabited 

evidence to show that it cannot be the abode of any of 
the forms of life known on earth, or even of any akin 
to these. The planet is enwrapped in dense cloud 
layers, whose changes of form indicate tremendous dis- 
turbances. The planet weighs so much less than we 
should expect from its enormous size (being only 310 
times as massive as the earth, while it is 1,250 times as 
large) that, knowing its materials to be the same, we 
have to assign to the real globe of Jupiter a much 
smaller volume than that of the cloud-enwrapped 
globe we actually see and measure. This has been 
proved, indeed, by Professor Darwin, who has shown 
that, unless the bulk of Jupiter's mass were concen- 
trated far within the surface we see, the movements of 
Jupiter's moons would be other than they are. Then 
in the great red spot, whose surface was three fourths 
of the earth's, and whose light was in part inherent, 
we have evidence of a disturbance altogether incom- 
patible with the idea that life can exist on the giant 
planet. For six years of our time that tremendous 
disturbance lasted, and, indeed, the spot, first seen in 
1876, has not altogether disappeared yet, though it 
has lost its characteristic luster. Who can imagine 
that there is life where a planet still retains such fiery 
heat that its cloud envelope is disturbed? " 

But is there a scientist or philosopher in these 
times who would put up the plea that Jupiter 
and his moons were unwisely created unless 
there are upon its surface " the dwelling places 
of tribes of organized creatures having a corre- 



Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune 43 

sponding analogy to those which inhabit the 
earth"? 

Rather should it be said that when the scien- 
tist, with telescope and spectroscope, is mentally 
stimulated and made more devout by his con- 
templations of this majestic planet, and when 
the savage, looking at it, not even knowing its 
name, and having no conception of its real 
magnitude, has a thrill of pleasure while looking 
upon its apparent size and its great beauty, and 
is led to worship the being who made it — then 
the ethical purpose in the creation of Jupiter 
is justified, and though now and forever tenant- 
less, it has been wisely placed in the heavens. 

2. The Planets Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune 

What has been said of Jupiter is essentially 
true of the other exterior planets. They were 
all once supposed to be the abode of organized 
living beings. 

Dr. Lardner, while concluding his elaborate 

discussion of the exterior planets, employs these 

words : 

1 We have thus presented the reader with a brief 
and rapid sketch of the circumstances attending the 



44 Stars Not Inhabited 

two chief groups of globes which compose the solar 
system, and have explained the discoveries and strik- 
ing analogies which, taken together, amount to a 
demonstration, that in the economy of the material 
universe these globes must subserve the same pur- 
poses as the earth, and must be the dwellings of tribes 
of organized creatures having a corresponding analogy 
to those which inhabit the earth/ ' 

In his book, " More Worlds than One," al- 
ready quoted, Sir David Brewster adopts a 
similar method of reasoning: 

" Uranus and Neptune must have been created for 
some grand purpose worthy of their Maker, and in the 
present state of our knowledge it is impossible to con- 
ceive any other purpose but that of being the residence 
of animal and intellectual life." 

It is not surprising that Lardner, Brewster, 
and others adopted this reasoning as to the ex- 
terior planets, for comparatively little was then 
known respecting them. Everything about 
them was amazing so far as known, and ev- 
erything is amazing about them still. Saturn, 
with its majestic rings, its mean diameter of 
seventy-three million miles, its high tempera- 
ture, and light specific gravity, only five sevenths 
of that of the earth; Uranus, whose orbital 



Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune 45 

measurement is three thousand six hundred 
million miles and Neptune, in every way no 
less wonderful, so dwarf the earth that it appears 
only a very small affair. But the largeness of a 
heavenly body, as already shown in case of 
Jupiter and the sun, is not a condition or an 
evidence of life upon its surface. And what was 
said as to the impossibility of organized life on 
Jupiter applies equally to these other exterior 
planets. Recent observations at the Lowell 
observatory, secured in the form of photographs 
of planetary spectra, show that there is oxygen 
in the atmospheres of all four, and that in the 
cases of Uranus and Neptune hydrogen and per- 
haps helium are atmospherically present. All 
the outer planets have water vapor as the princi- 
pal constituent of their atmospheres. They 
probably consist of a nucleus fiery hot to its 
surface, veiled in dense, unbroken clouds, float- 
ing in an atmosphere largely composed of 
steam. 

The following statements of Professor Proctor 
concerning Saturn are no less true of Uranus 
and Neptune: 



46 Stars Not Inhabited 

" Saturn has in like manner been shown to be unfit 
for life. Apart from the shadow cast by its ring 
system for years in succession on all places in such 
Saturnian latitudes as Americans occupy on this earth, 
he, like Jupiter, is enwrapped by deep cloud masses. 
His atmosphere is continually disturbed by move- 
ments such as only intense internal heat could 
produce." 

3. The Planet Mars 

The planet concerning which there has been 
of late the most persistent discussion as to its 
suitableness for living organisms is Mars. It 
is at present attracting special attention, and 
with good reason, for it is pretty certain, if it 
cannot be demonstrated, that Mars is in condi- 
tion for habitation, or if it cannot be demon- 
strated that it actually is inhabited, then it 
would seem forever useless to attempt such 
demonstration in case of any other of the 
heavenly bodies. 

(1) Its Condition and Location 

Its physical makeup, in some respects much 

like that of the earth, and more so perhaps than 

any other planet, also its nearness to the earth, 

nearer than any planet except Venus, and the 



The Planet Mars 47 

comparative ease with which it can be exam- 
ined, especially in its " opposition, " afford op- 
portunity for gaining a correct knowledge of its 
character, such as is not afforded in case of any 
other of the heavenly bodies except the moon. 6 

It is not, therefore, surprising that those who 
believe in a plurality of inhabited worlds are 
making the very most possible of what is discov- 
ered on Mars to substantiate their theory, or 
that those who do not believe the planet is 
inhabited are taking scarcely less interest in the 
observations now making. It requires, there- 
fore, no very acute logical powers to reach the 
conclusion that, if there are intelligent beings on 
Mars, not much unlike mankind, then the pre- 
sumption is many times increased that other 
heavenly bodies may also be inhabited, and the 
contention that beings who are the equals, or 
even the superiors, of mankind may at this very 
moment be thronging the physical universe in 
every direction can no longer be classed 
among the absurdities of scientific speculation. 

In view, therefore, of the general interest 
awakened on this subject, and in view of the 



48 Stars Not Inhabited 

hasty and needless concessions that have been 
made by both scientists and theologians, the 
author will be pardoned should he dwell at 
what seems to be a disproportionate length 
upon this planet. 

It may be remarked in passing that the 
objection which not a few astronomers urge 
against the theory of civilized people on Mars 
is not in consequence of " a sort of jealousy 
against other planets," or a selfish desire that 
intelligence should be confined to our earth, but 
is in consequence of the entire absence of sci- 
entific evidence in support of the hypothesis. 
One may feel assured that if there were trust- 
worthy evidence of the existence of life and 
intelligence on Mars, there would not be a 
scholar or thinker, scientist or theologian, who 
would not welcome the evidence, " not only 
with pleasure, but with a wild enthusiasm." 

(2) Early Observers of the Planet 

For nearly three hundred years Mars has been 
under pretty close scrutiny. Galileo, in 1632, 
thought he discovered indications of land and 



The Planet Mars 49 

water. In 1659 the mapping of Mars began, 
with a rough sketch by Christian Huygens, the 
Dutch physician and astronomer. 

In 1667 Domenico Cassini, of Bologna, noted 
its revolutions. A nephew of Cassini, Maraldi, 
made note of what he thought to be land, 
water, and white spots at the south pole. 

These several astronomers assumed that the 
meteorological conditions of Mars are much like 
those of the earth and that it is, or may be, 
peopled by living beings like ourselves. 

Early in their investigations the Herschels 
discovered white spots at the north pole, the 
revolutions of the planet, and indications of an 
atmosphere. 

In 1 781 Sir William Herschel stated his opin- 
ion thus: 

" The planet has considerable atmosphere, so that 
its inhabitants probably enjoy a situation in many 
respects similar to ours." 

Beer, in 1830, and Madler, in 1839, were con- 
vinced that the white spots at the poles are 
snow. 

In 1840 Herschel announced his opinion as 



50 Stars Not Inhabited 

to the analogies existing between the earth 
and Mars in these words : 

" If we then find that the globe we inhabit has its 
polar regions frozen and covered with mountains of 
ice and snow that only partly melt when alternately 
exposed to the sun, I may well be permitted to sur- 
mise that the same cause may probably have the same 
effect on the globe of Mars ; that the bright polar spots 
are caused by the vivid reflection of light from frozen 
regions, and that the reduction of these spots is to be 
ascribed to their being exposed to the sun." 

Dr. Lardner in his treatise, " Museum of 

Science and Art " (1854) , thus expressed his own 

and the prevailing views of his day: 

" The numerous analogies that subsist between our 
earth and Mars, Venus, and Mercury afford the highest 
degree of probability, not to say moral certainty, to 
the conclusion that these three planets which, with the 
earth, revolve nearest to the sun, are, like the earth, 
appropriated by the omnipotent Creator and Ruler of 
the universe to races very closely resembling, if not 
absolutely identical with, those with which the earth is 
peopled." 

(3) Later Observers of Mars, and Their 

Opinions 

Among the distinguished a stronomers of later 

date who have given special attention to Mars, 

and who think that it has intelligent life upon 



The Planet Mars 5 1 

its surface, appears the name of Giovanni 
Virinio Schiaparelli, the distinguished Italian 
astronomer. In 1881-82 he mapped the so- 
called canals, named by him " candle" prop- 
erly translated by the English word " channels." 
He also suggested that the so-called continents 
of Mars were rather " an agglomeration of 
islands/ ' separated by what he thought to be 
streams leading into the sea. Later he discov- 
ered, in no fewer than twenty instances, sec- 
ondary candle alongside the first ones that he 
had mapped. 

In 1869 Professor Proctor constructed a map 
of Mars from drawings of W. R. Dawes, in 
which the whole surface of the planet is marked 
out into what have been called " separate 
estates." 

In 1877 Prof. Simon Newcomb, in his book, 
11 Popular Astronomy," having studied as thor- 
oughly as he was able the physical conditions 
of Mars, became an advocate of life on that 
planet. M Life," he says, " not wholly unlike 
that on the earth may exist upon Mars for any- 
thing we know to the contrary." 



52 Stars Not Inhabited 

Prof. David Todd, of Amherst College, has 
had an extended career of usefulness in the field 
of astronomical research. He was chief of the 
United States naval observatory eclipse party 
to Texas in 1878 ; in charge of the Lick Observa- 
tory during observations of the transit of Venus 
in 1882; in charge of the American eclipse 
expedition to Japan, 1887; chief of the United 
States scientific expedition to West Africa in 
1889-90; chief of the Amherst eclipse expedi- 
tion to Japan in 1896; Tripoli, 1900; Dutch 
East Indies, 1901; Tripoli, 1905; and chief of 
the Lowell expedition to the Andes in 1907. 

During this last expedition he took nine 
thousand photographs of the planet Mars, 
having at command the best and latest appli- 
ances, and stationed in a location among the 
most commanding the world affords. 

It is of interest to note that nothing was 
discovered during these last observations that 
enabled the professor to speak with any more 
assurance of life on Mars than he did to the 
author the winter before the visit to the Andes 
was made. 



The Planet Mars 53 

Another advocate of life on Mars is Professor 

Paliza, imperial privy counsellor and director 

of the Vienna Observatory. He already has 

published, or is soon to do so, a learned paper 

on the existence of human beings on Mars. His 

preliminary statement is the following: 

" I do not see any reason for denying the possibility 
of the existence of human beings on Mars. Mars' con- 
ditions favor the theory advanced by European and 
American scientists that Mars is populated. The Mars 
canals, reaching across the equator, cannot be merely 
natural phenomena; nature must have been aided in 
their construction. We know that Mars has very little 
water ; hence, if Mars be populated, the existence of the 
canals is fully explained." 

The still more recent observations, those of 
1907-9, made by M. Flammarion, the French 
astronomer, by Professor Lowell at Arequipa, 
South America, by Professor Todd at Aleanza, 
South America, and by astronomers elsewhere, 
have added scarcely any really new data to the 
subject, though certain opinions heretofore 
tentatively held have been well confirmed. 

For instance, its revolution on its axis, the 
change of surface conditions in summer and 
winter, the small amount of water on its surface, 



54 Stars Not Inhabited 

the rarity of its atmosphere, desert places or 
lava beds where seas were formerly supposed to 
exist, were quite well-established during these 
recent observations. But, on the other hand, 
evidence of habitable conditions do not seem at 
all to have improved. Recent evidence is no 
more conclusive on this point than it was in the 
days of Sir William Herschel, though specula- 
tion has almost run riot. 

(4) Proposed Communication with Mars 
Assuming that Mars is inhabited, a few sci- 
entists are now entertaining the thought that 
we may soon be able to communicate with the 
Martian people. 

Nicola Tesla, the distinguished Hungarian 
physicist, suggests that the Martians have been 
trying for ages to talk with the inhabitants of 
the earth. The following is his reasoning: 

M As the Martians are probably more advanced and 
skilled than we, their first readable message to the 
earth will undoubtedly be, * We have been calling you 
for the last ten thousand years.* 

" Once communication is established, the Martians 
will gradually take our code and learn it first, and then 
teach us theirs in plain English. Difficult as this feat 



The Planet Mars 55 

would seem, it in reality would not be comparable 
with the achievement of teaching a deaf, dumb, and 
blind child to talk. To talk to Mars is only a matter 
of patience now." 

Tesla is of the opinion that the output of 
energy produced by Niagara Falls, could it be 
harnessed, would afford power sufficient to send 
wireless messages to Mars. 

With some of these views of Tesla, Flammarion 
is in full agreement. 

Not long since, Flammarion, speaking of the 
supposed efforts of the people of Mars to signal 
the earth, expressed himself thus : 

" I dare say the Martians tried to communicate with 
us hundreds of thousands of years ago, when mam- 
moths were wandering around our comparatively 
youthful planet. The Martians may have tried again 
a few thousand years ago, and, never having obtained a 
response, concluded that the earth was uninhabited or 
that its denizens did not trouble themselves about the 
study of the universe or the search after eternal truths. " 

On being informed that Professor Pickering, 
of Harvard University, is to make an effort to 
get into communication with the inhabitants of 
our neighboring planet, Flammarion repeated 
his opinion thus : 



56 Stars Not Inhabited 

" The fact is, there is no doubt that the Martians, 
if they exist, have already attempted to get into com- 
munication with our planet. It must not be forgotten 
that the telescope was unknown three hundred years 
ago, and only within the last one hundred years have 
astronomers studied Mars seriously, so it may be that, 
unperceived by the inhabitants of the earth, the Mar- 
tians signaled to us thousands of years ago, and, ob- 
taining no response, abandoned their efforts, conclud- 
ing that our planet is uninhabited. 

11 The first primitive calls exchanged would be just 
the interplanetary telegraphic, ■ Are you there? ' 
Once communication is established the invention of a 
code of thought transmission, intelligible for both 
worlds, would be a comparatively easy matter.' ' 

Professor Pickering, though very much in 
doubt whether there is life on Mars, has at 
different times during the past seventeen years 
suggested that if intelligent beings inhabited 
that planet they might be communicated with, 
provided suitable apparatus were furnished. 

Recently, in order to correct some popular 
misconceptions of his views, the professor is 
reported to have employed these words : 

" I have been a little surprised by all this agitation 
about talking to Mars, for I had attached no very 
special significance to the idea. In 1892 I said that if 



The Planet Mars 57 

the money were forthcoming to provide the equipment 
it would be possible to talk to the Martians, if the 
planet has an intelligent population. At various times 
in succeeding years, and in addresses made in widely 
separated portions of the country, I have repeated the 
statement, but only within the last few weeks has 
there been any development of agitation about it. 

" As a matter of fact, astronomers are not unani- 
mous in the opinion that Mars is inhabited. Many do 
not agree to that proposition. They would say that 
Mars may have an intelligent population, but it has 
not yet been demonstrated. Prof. Percival Lowell is 
sure that there are intelligent beings there, and his 
views have attracted much attention. But I am not 
convinced that the phenomena he* has observed are 
susceptible of no other interpretation. ,, 

Professor Lowell, also of Harvard University, 

classed among the ablest and best-equipped 

astronomers who are sponsors for the theory 

that Mars in inhabited, sufficiently indicates 

his attitude towards the subject in the following 

quotation : 

" Quite possibly such Martian folk are possessed 
of inventions of which we have not dreamed, and with 
them aeroplanes and kinetoscopes are things of a by- 
gone past, preserved with veneration in museums as 
relics of the clumsy contrivances of the simple child- 
hood of the race. Certainly what we see hints at the 
existence of beings who are in advance of, not behind, 
us in the journey of life/' 



58 Stars Not Inhabited 

He adds the following words, which no one, 
it may be presumed, will call in question : 

" If an answering signal should be received from 
Mars it would be safe to say that the event would tran- 
scend in human interest and importance the most 
stirring occurrence in the history of the earth, and 
would inaugurate a new era in the progress of the 
human race." 

Professor Todd, in advocating a balloon obser- 
vation of Mars, speaks thus during a reported 
interview, June, 1909: 

" If conscious life is just possible on Mars, and, if 
existent, in view of the more advanced development of 
the planet, its peoples should be at a more advanced 
stage of evolution and hence more familiar than we 
with the physical facts of the universe; if so, it 
becomes possible that they have for some time been 
trying to reach us by signals through the ether with 
the forces which we employ in wireless telegraphy. 
And if this possibility be admitted, there could hardly 
be a more favorable time to attempt to receive such 
signals than when a balloon is at a high altitude be- 
yond some of the surface disturbances/ * 

The conjectures are so very numerous in this 
quotation that most scientists would give the 
professor's words no place in a strictly sober 
discussion of the subject, 



The Planet Mars 5 9 

4. Mars (Continued) 

(1) Spontaneous Generation and Evolution 
on Mars 

The author of a book quite well advertised, 
entitled " Mars and Its Mystery " (1908), argues 
with great assurance not only that Mars is 
inhabited, but that life on that planet originated 
essentially the same as on the earth, by sponta- 
neous generation, and that intelligent beings 
were developed there as here, " by the rational 
and natural processes of evolution. " 

One especially regrets that Professor Lowell 
has offered a similar explanation for the intro- 
duction of life on the earth as well as on the 
planet Mars. He claims that " water, heat, 
and salt supplied the necessary conditions for 
the creation of life in the early history of the 
planets.'' 

Professor Todd follows Professor Lowell in 
this assumption that spontaneous generation 
and evolution are the life-producing agencies 
on all the planets that are inhabited. 

It is not surprising, perhaps, that the author 
of " Mars and Its Mystery " should on this 



60 Stars Not Inhabited 

subject have fallen into error, for, without in- 
vestigation, he has taken the " say so " of others. 
But it is surprising, quite out of measure, that 
distinguished college professors should lead off 
in this error and speak of the spontaneous 
generation of life on Mars or anywhere else as 
an established fact, since that theory is not 
supported by the thinnest shadow of evidence. 
Science, as every schoolboy is supposed to 
know, has written in capital letters, under- 
scored, this formula, " There is no life except 
from antecedent life." No writer on scientific 
subjects, not to say college professors, should 
be ignorant of the fact that the " scientific 
world has strained for the past fifty years with 
travailing pains to bring forth a single certified 
sample of spontaneous life without result." 7 

Theology, therefore, need have no hesita- 
tion in making the additional announcement 
that the antecedent life of all life must be the 
life of the Eternal God, especially manifested 
in Jesus Christ. Ps. 36 19; John 1 13, 4. 

So, too, for one to account for the presence 
of intelligent beings on Mars or elsewhere by 



The Planet Mars 61 

any process of evolution yet proposed is, at 
the present stage of scientific inquiry, utterly 
unpardonable. 

No leading biologist the world over, even 
though blindly holding the theory of evolution, 
claims that there is a particle of substantial 
scientific evidence in its support and, within 
five years, evolution, as taught by Mr. Darwin 
and Professor Hseckel, has been abandoned by 
half a score of noted scientists in Germany 
alone who were once its advocates. And 
American scientists of reputable standing have, 
within two or three years, ceased to defend the 
Darwinian theory of evolution and at the 
present time have very little to say in support 
of any scheme of materialistic evolution known 
to science in the last fifteen hundred years. 

In passing, attention may be called to an 
argument not much used against evolution, 
yet, perhaps as pointed as any that have 
been employed ; it is based upon what may be 
termed the doctrine of chances. 

That is, when there are taken into account 
the millions of chances against the same physi- 



62 Stars Not Inhabited 

cal conditions, such as gravity, air pressure, 
temperature, moisture, light, etc., and their 
interdependence upon one another that are 
characteristic of this earth, being repeated on 
Mars or some other planet, and when the addi- 
tional millions of chances involved in the 
development from lower forms of organic life 
up to man are also taken into account, one is 
confronted with billions upon billions of 
chances or improbabilities against the evolution 
of man, or any being resembling man, by 
natural processes on any planet or star in the 
universe. 

But even if there were some star somewhere 
in space that has precisely the same meteoro- 
logical conditions as are found on earth, and if 
beings akin to man are found there, then they 
must have originated as every form of life on 
earth originated, not by spontaneous genera- 
tion, or by evolution through natural selection, 
but, so far as is now known, by supernatural 
intervention and creation. These attempts to 
rule everything supernatural out of the universe 
may continue for a while longer, but sooner 



The Planet Mars 63 

or later a saner science will enthrone a Creator 
wherever life and intelligence are found. 

F. H. Turner has stated with great clearness 
the harmony between science and theology as 
to the First Cause, which inferentially is a blow 
at materialistic evolution : 

" In the middle third of the last century the in- 
explicable Time Spirit roused in the minds of several 
scientific men in England and Germany suggestions 
which led up, by way of experiment and inference, 
to the law that the universe is the expression of One 
Energy, the same yesterday, to-day, and forever, 
eternally changeless, though infinitely diverse in 
form. This discovery, an immortal triumph of sci- 
ence, is simply the verification of religion's first 
postulate and is the basis of science as it is the basis 
of religion. 

11 There is one energy, of which all the frame of 
things is but an expression, declares Science. The 
One Energy of the universe is God, the Lord Almighty, 
declares Religion. Thus the grandest discovery of 
science is seen to be one with the grandest announce- 
ment of Religion; and more and more, as science 
grows and creeds broaden, will men come to learn 
that in nature lurks not the destruction, but the 
confirmation, of religious faith.* ' 

Briefer, but essentially not less to the point, 
are words from the late Professor Cope, who, 



64 Stars Not Inhabited 

in an address to one of his classes a few days 
before his death, thus expressed his misgivings 
as to the materialistic view of creation which, 
as is well known, he had advocated for many- 
years, with a cogency rarely equaled : 

" I do not know that I am prepared to believe in 
theism, nor am I prepared to deny it ; but one thing 
I must believe: that there is something that is the 
author of life which must always have been." 

An article written by Herbert Spencer not 
long before his death contains a confession 
almost identical with that of Professor Cope : 

" There is one thing we are sure of, namely, that 
there is something all-powerful and orderly that 
must always have existed." 

The position demanded by a sound philosophy 
is, therefore, this: that the late abandonment of 
evolution by German scholars of note, the un- 
answerable argument, now held by the ablest 
thinkers of the present century, based upon 
" the one eternal energy," and the confessions of 
Professor Cope and Herbert Spencer, — the one 
almost a lifelong foe of theism and the other 
for years a strenuous agnostic, — ought to 



The Planet Mars 65 

bring a stinging rebuke upon any American 
scientist, professor, or writer who talks of the 
peopling of Mars or any other planet or star 
with any form of life, or with any order of 
intelligent beings, by the agencies of spontaneous 
generation and evolution through natural selec- 
tion, survival of the fittest, or otherwise. 

(2) Argument from Analogy Fatal to the 
Theory of Life on Mars 

Observing scientists have some time since 
discovered that analogies once supposed to 
exist between the earth and Mars are, upon 
careful examination, far less evident or satis- 
factory than formerly, and that their force and 
importance have diminished about in propor- 
tion as a knowledge of that planet has increased. 

There may properly be mentioned a few 
facts bearing upon the analogical argument. 

There was a time when the earth was unin- 
habitable. It was a globe of fire for ages, and it 
is estimated that for a million years of the 
thousand million of the earth's existence the 
oceans on its surface were boiling hot. 



66 Stars Not Inhabited 

And not long before man came upon the earth 
its condition was such that, had he then ap- 
peared, the hour of his birth would have been 
the hour of his death. And slowly but surely the 
earth is approaching a state that will witness, 
when reached, the complete extermination of 
every form of existing life. This statement may 
arrest attention for a moment. 

Professor Lowell, in a recent lecture in 
Huntington Hall, Boston, employed these words: 

" Our earth is drying up, like others that have 
gone before. Desert places, scarcely habitable now, 
were the seats of thriving populations within the 
period of written history. The great Salt Lake of 
Utah was left isolated by the retirement of the sea, 
due to its gradual drying up, which will go on till 
there is no longer a sea at all. Air will depart and the 
planet will be left a shriveled mummy, floating in space 
and incapable of supporting life. 

" The earth will finally turn the same face in per- 
petuity to the sun as the moon does to us. Different 
stages may be noted in the creeping paralysis by 
which the body is at last overcome." 

" As for the future," says Lord Kelvin, " the 
inhabitants of the earth- cannot continue to 
enjoy the light and heat essential to their life 
many million years longer." 



The Planet Mars 67 

After quoting these words from Kelvin, 
Waldemar Kaempffert, in " Science History " 
(1909), makes this statement: 

" It seems assured that millions of years hence 
the sun will be reduced from a ball of glowing vapor 
to a gigantic black cinder rushing through space, 
washed by oceans of air liquefied by a cold too 
intense for any living creature to endure.' ' 

This history of the earth and sun is also that 
of all planetary existences unless some merciful 
catastrophe, such as a collision with other celes- 
tial bodies, shall result in what may be termed 
the accidental death of our own and other 
worlds. 

But long before these final stages are reached, 
perhaps millions of ages before, there will be 
changes on the earth that will leave no living 
thing to walk its surface or breathe its atmos- 
phere. 

And the period of time in which it would be 
possible for a human being to live during the 
natural history of a planet is much briefer than 
one might suppose. 

As is well known, the conditions upon which 
human life depends are so delicately adjusted 



68 Stars Not Inhabited 

that it would require only a very small change 
in the earth and its environments to kill off 
every living thing upon its surface. A slight 
change in the composition of the atmosphere, 
or in that of water, would render them both 
deadly poisons. 

Or should the tail of a comet, one of the most 
perplexing enigmas of science, enter our atmos- 
phere for one day, leaving in its flight its poi- 
sonous gases, not a human being on the day 
following would be left alive to bury a world 
full of dead people. 

Thus also a little more than the ordinary 
amount of heat, if continued, or an increase of 
cold, if protracted, would likewise very speedily 
be fatal to all living things. The estimate is 
that human life depends on keeping changes 
of temperature within a range of about one per 
cent of what are known as the possible extremes 
between which organized living things can exist. 

And, if the winters on the earth were much 
lengthened, there could not be raised enough 
produce in summer to carry the race through 
the year, and, even if there were provisions 



The Planet Mars 69 

enough, it is doubtful whether humanity could 
long survive the accumulated and continuous 
cold of a succession of such winters. 

Now, with regard to Mars, it is to be said that, 
owing to its comparative smallness, it is three 
times nearer what is called " planetary decrepi- 
tude and death " than is the earth, and on this 
ground alone is three times less likely than the 
earth to be inhabitable even if all other condi- 
tions for habitation were favorable, which, 
however, are very far from being the case. 

But it has been estimated by those who are 
studying these planetary problems that the 
winters on Mars are twice as long and far more 
than twice as severe as they are on the earth. 

And aside from this it has been shown that 
if the density of the atmosphere on the earth at 
sea level were changed so as to be no more rare 
than it is at an altitude of eighteen or twenty 
thousand feet, each zone of the earth would 
be buried perpetually under masses of ice and 
snow. 

But as a matter of fact, the atmosphere on 
Mars at the canal or water level is twice as thin 



70 Stars Not Inhabited 

as that on the summit of a twenty thousand 
feet mountain peak on the earth, and would, 
therefore, be an intolerable abode for beings 
constituted like humanity. 

Elisee Reclus, in his " Universal Geography " 
(1894), employs this forceful language: " But 
a few miles above our heads lies the region of 
death, and into this terrible zone the loftiest 
mountains of the earth elevate their white 
summits." 

This altitude of peril and death has been 
approximately, if not pretty definitely, ascer- 
tained by means of balloon ascensions. 

Among the highest ascensions thus far made 
are those by Glashier, the intrepid English bal- 
loonist, who went up twenty-eight times to 
high levels, seven miles being the limit. This 
altitude ruptured his lung tissue, causing hem- 
orrhage, and probably shortened his life. 

Professor Todd, on reaching the summit of 
Fujiyama, twelve thousand three hundred and 
sixty-five feet high, promptly fainted. Pilgrims 
perish there every year from the effect of this 
rarefied air. 



The Planet Mars 71 

The professor makes this very correct state- 
ment: 

" The human organism is constructed to live at 
the bottom of an ocean of compressed air, and ascent 
to levels nearer the surface of that ocean disarranges 
the machinery of the body." 

In the Sunday Magazine (1907), Dr. W. R. C. 
Latson describes the experiences of three aero- 
nauts, Tissandier, Sivel, and Croce-Spinelli, 
who made an ascension in a large balloon, Zenith. 

The greatest height attained was estimated 
at twenty-eight thousand feet. 

Tissandier barely survived, though uncon- 
scious a part of the time, but his two compan- 
ions were dead when the balloon reached the 
earth. 8 

Now, since the atmosphere on Mars at the 
sea level is twice as thin as that on the summit 
of a twenty thousand feet mountain peak on 
the earth, it follows that if there are people on 
Mars who are at all like those on the earth they 
would have to live in airtight boxes, heated with 
furnaces into which oxygen would need to be 
constantly pumped in order to keep them alive. 9 



72 Stars Not Inhabited 

And worse than this, since Mars is only one 
half as large as the earth and is ■ thirty-five 
million miles farther from the sun; since its 
surface is nearly level and, if there is water 
there, which is very questionable, it cannot be 
more in quantity on the entire planet than 
that contained in one of the several North 
American lakes; since during certain seasons 
of the year the temperature of Mars, according 
to Professor Pickering's statement before the 
Beacon Society (February, 1907), drops to four 
hundred and sixty degrees below zero, — in 
view of all these facts it certainly is difficult to 
imagine how any one can be so far carried away 
with pet preconceptions and predispositions as 
to argue that the analogies existing between 
the earth and Mars justify the theory that 
beings "endowed much as humanity is" are 
denizens of that war-named and nearby planet. 

But more than this ; since man can contrive 
to live under conditions that are fatal to most 
other forms of terrestrial life, animal or vege- 
table, it follows that the contention that any 
form of life known to the scientific world could 



The Planet Mars 73 

exist for any length of time on the planet Mars 
is based upon nothing more substantial than 
pure assumption. 

There could be added other groupings of 
facts bearing upon the argument from analogy 
that make seriously against the claims of the 
Schiaparelli-Lowell advocates, but seemingly 
enough has been said to make it clear that what- 
ever the design in the creation of Mars and the 
other planets may have been, it certainly was 
not, at least during the lifetime of humanity, to 
have upon their surface any forms of intelligent 
organized life known to science, or any such as 
the human mind can rationally conceive. 

(3) Conservatism and Misgivings of Some 
of the Advocates of Life on Mars 

Attention at this point may be called to the 
fact that some among those holding the theory 
that intelligent beings inhabit Mars, and who are 
qualified to speak on the subject, are much more 
conservative than men of limited knowledge 
who are announcing their opinions with the 
largest measure of assurance if not dogmatism. 



74 Stars Not Inhabited 

Prof. H. A. How, director of the Chamberlin 
Observatory at Denver, Colorado, a believer in 
other inhabited worlds, while claiming that 
beings constituted differently from man might 
exist on Mars, concludes that people like those 
on earth would have there only a very poor 
showing, if any showing at all. 

In his " Elements of Descriptive Astronomy " 
(1907), the professor makes these statements: 

" If we have simply to answer the question, Would 
a man, as constituted at present, if transported to 
Mars, find it possible to exist there? the most probable 
answer is, No. It may be said with some assurance 
that the man would gasp a few times and then die." 

Professor Lowell, though classed among the 
most enthusiastic advocates of intelligent life 
on Mars, makes this concession : " It is certain 
there can be no man there/ ' 

And as already suggested, Professor Todd 
seems to speak with less assurance than for- 
merly. In reported interviews, May and June, 
1909, the professor was asked to state his plans 
for establishing wireless communications with 
the people of Mars. His reply was this: 



The Planet Mars 75 

11 What would you say if I told you that I have 
very grave doubts whether there are any beings on 
Mars with whom I or any one else can hold commu- 
nications of any kind? 

" My observation of the ' canals' of Mars on the 
Andes expedition was not wholly convincing. Ani- 
mal life on Mars at the present time is possible, but 
the general drift of astronomical opinion is against 
that hypothesis. Nature seems to fill with life every 
nook and cranny where life can comfortably exist, 
and it seems certain that Mars had conscious life at 
some past epoch. But as its present temperature 
and atmospheric conditions might be surmised to 
be somewhat like those prevailing at the summit 
of Mt. Everest, or even higher still, it is difficult to 
conceive that animal life still exists there/' 

In a word, it is safe to say that no leading 
astronomer or biologist in Europe or America 
will for a moment question the statement that 
any race of men, or any beings at all resembling 
men, if translated to Mars, would instantly 
die. 

And it is more than likely that no well- 
informed scientist, unless intoxicated with a pet 
theory, will question the opinion of Professor 
Proctor, who at one time strongly advocated 
the theory that Mars is the abode of living 



76 Stars Not Inhabited 

intelligences, but who, in " Old and New As- 
tronomy " (1888), thus states his change of 
view: 

" Mars has not yet reached that airless and water- 
less condition, that extremity of internal cold, or, in 
fact, that utter unfitness to support life of any kind, 
which seems to prevail in the moon. But I fancy 
there is not a single region of the earth now inhabited . 
by man which is not infinitely more comfortable as 
an abode of life than the most favored regions of 
Mars at the present time would be for creatures like 
ourselves/ ' 



5. Mars (Continued) 

(1) Martian Canals 

Without dwelling longer upon the argument 
from analogy which turns out to be damaging 
instead of helpful to the theory that intelligent 
beings are dwelling on Mars, attention is next 
called to the canals of that planet, now desig- 
nated "a fascinating mystery," which are said 
by some of the friends of the plurality of in- 
habited worlds to afford " an irrefutable demon- 
stration " that intelligent beings of some sort 
and in goodly numbers exist there. 



The Planet Mars 77 

a. Natural, Supernatural, or Artificial 
The declaration of Professor Lowell, sup- 
ported by Perrotin, Thallon, and some other 
astronomers, is that the " markings," also " the 
spot system " of Mars, cannot be natural, 
and, therefore, must be either supernatural or 
artificial. Their supernatural formation being 
ruled out of the discussion by an implied general 
agreement, there remains the theory of artificial 
construction. But if they are artificial, then 
the conclusion follows that they are the work 
of intelligent beings not so very unlike mankind, 
though probably much superior; that they 
have been constructed for purposes of irriga- 
tion, and establish beyond question, it is said, 
the great perseverance and astonishing skill of 
the Martian people. 

And beyond question, if the markings on 
Mars are canals, some of which are between 
three and four thousand miles long, and if the 
Martians have been following scientific methods 
of irrigation, the minds that devised those stu- 
pendous works must equal or outrank those of 
Newton, Bacon, or any of the other great 



78 Stars Not Inhabited 

thinkers of the world ; nor would the statement 
of Professor Lowell seem so very extravagant, 
that " the canals of Mars are the most aston- 
ishing objects to be viewed in the heavens/ ' 

Now, while one may not object to any 
amount of conjecture as to the markings on 
Mars, yet one should, or certainly may, object 
to the palming off of mere conjecture for estab- 
lished facts, a procedure of which scientists, 
and some theologians, not infrequently have 
been guilty. 

b. Phenomena 

In forming an opinion as to those markings 
which have been very extensively advertised 
and placarded, several phenomena should be 
carefully considered. 

The first of these claiming attention is that, 
while the planets in their history and general 
characteristics have much in common, yet as a 
matter of fact, and as is the case with all natural 
objects, no two are exactly alike. Saturn has 
its rings; other planets do not. Venus and 
Mercury, unlike the other planets, are without 



The Planet Mars 79 

satellites. The moon moves round the earth 
in one direction; the satellites of Uranus and 
Neptune have an opposite direction, or, as it is 
called, a " retrograde movement/ ' The orbits 
of the satellites of Uranus, unlike those of any 
other planet, are nearly perpendicular to the 
elliptic. Mars has two moons, the smaller one 
revolving nearly three times as swiftly as the 
planet rotates on its axis, which is an anomaly 
in the planetary system. 

The eccentricities of Mars in its loops and 
curves also have no parallel yet discovered in 
the solar system. 

So that if it should be established that the 
markings of Mars are noticeably peculiar, it is 
equally true that they are no more so than are 
other unlikenesses found elsewhere among the 
planets, and certainly they are not sufficiently 
peculiar to establish the theory of artificial 
construction. 

And it may also be said that nature in a 
general way is a very clever mechanic and 
geometrician. If furnished with a few materials, 
and if allowed certain conditions, she can draw 



80 Stars Not Inhabited 

a long, straight line with the accuracy of an 
artist and with the same ease as she draws short, 
crooked ones. The child throws his breath 
upon a frost-chilled window-pane and suddenly 
lines appear no less wonderful in their character 
and precision than the markings of Mars. 

Among the clouds, with moisture and low 
temperature, nature manufactures and flings 
to the earth crystals by the millions that for 
geometrical perfection and artistic beauty sur- 
pass any formations by the most skillful arti- 
san on earth. 

The flowing tides shape such crescents out of 
sand and gravel that if one were ignorant of 
their formations they would be pronounced 
artificial. 

Ice cracks often present lines that are as 
carefully drawn as if artificial. Other curious 
markings, when attentively studied, will awaken 
one's interest and perhaps wonder, but when 
understood are found to be perfectly natural in 
their formation. 

The accompanying figures, pages 81 and 82, 
may interest a student of these subjects. 



The Planet Mars 



81 




Cracks on the surface of a mesa in 
Arizona produced by summer heat. 



(i) represents cracks in the moon ; 
(2) represents the great rift in 
southern Africa. 




Cracks in the lunar crater Mud cracks on shore of a fresh 
Eratosthenes, extending a distance water lake. 
of fifty miles or more. 




Series of 
pavement. 



cracks in an 



asphalt Cracks in the glaze of Japanese 
pottery ware. 



82 



Stars Not Inhabited 




Cracks in dwelling-house plaster- 
ing covering space of ten feet by 
five. 



c. Mountain Ranges on the Earth and Moon 

If one could look at some of the mountain 
ranges of the earth at a distance of forty million 
miles more or fewer, one easily could imagine 
them to be artificial canals. 

M. Elie de Beaumont, in his " Mountain 
System' ' (1852), calls attention to the almost 
perfect regularity of the western portion of the 
Pyrenees and to the no less perfect parallel 
ranges of that mountain system. To the people 
on Mars, if the planet is inhabited, and if the 
people there are imaginative and speculative 
enough, and have telescopes of sufficient power, 
the Pyrenees and likewise the coast range, 
the Rockies and Sierras of North America, 



The Planet Mars 83 

would appear very singular and possibly, owing 
to their regularity, would be pronounced 
artificial. 

Photographs of volcanoes on the Hawaiian 
Islands, taken not long since by Professor 
Pickering, show certain strong resemblances to 
the craters on the moon. And while studying 
Mount Eratosthenes in 1904, the professor 
found its interior seamed with numerous fine 
cracks, some of which soon after the sun rose 
broadened out and changed into "canals" 
like the markings on Mars. (" Popular As- 
tronomy,' ' January, 1909.) 

Upon the surface of the moon there is a 
crack, of moon-quake or volcanic origin, named 
Ariadaeus Rill, one hundred and fifty miles in 
length, that is not unlike some of the markings 
on Mars. 

Smaller than this are nearly a thousand other 
rills or markings on the moon that have been 
already catalogued. 

The moon has likewise mountain ranges 
which, if more remote, might easily be mistaken 
for artificial canals. 



8 4 



Stars Not Inhabited 




Z<777»«0 

M*re 



Arctimt&s 



Aridities 



Map of the Moon's Apennines, traced at the Paris Observatory 

From " Popular Astronomy," 1904, xii, 439; 
from" Annals of Harvard College Observatory/' 
liii, 79, and from " Memoirs American Acad- 
emy, " 1906, xiii, 176, are gathered the follow- 
ing facts : 

The markings on the moon, when seen 
through a small telescope, are indistinguishable 
from those on Mars. They go through the same 
changes and transfonnations in " the course of 
a lunation " as do the Martian canals in the 



The Fianet Mars 85 

course of the Martian year, and differ from 
them only in the fact that they are on a much 
smaller scale. But through a large telescope, 
with good atmospheric conditions, the crater- 
lets and cracks about which the lunar lakes and 
canals are formed can be distinctly seen, and 
the gradual transformation of a crack into a 
canal has been watched, and the rate of growth 
of the latter has been measured. Through a 
small glass the lunar canals, like those on Mars, 
appear straight and perfectly uniform. But 
through a large glass, irregularities of outline 
are seen, together with marked variations in 
depth and coloring. And it is highly probable 
that each of the interior planets has markings 
not unlike those on Mars and the moon. The 
earth, too, when well on in its increasing and 
inevitable decrepitude, by reason of its cooling 
and shrinking, may yet have surface markings 
that at great distances would naturally enough 
be mistaken for canals. 

It may, therefore, turn out, when the mark- 
ings of the planet Mars are better known and 
more carefully traced, that they will seem no 



86 



Stars Not Inhabited 



more artificial or wonderful than the polygonal 
cracks on the mesas of Arizona, or of those on 
the glaze of Japanese pottery, or in ordinary 
sun-baked mud, a sloping asphaltum sidewalk, 
or on a field of ice ; no more supernormal than 
some of the mountain ranges on the earth, or 
than the fissures on the moon. 



d. Charts and Observations of Mars 

Another fact, very troublesome to some of 
the canal advocates, is that the markings on 
Mars, as shown on the charts of different 
astronomers, do not agree with one another. 
And the observations of the same astronomer 
at different times give different results. A 




Tracing from a hemispherical map Section of globe on which Pro- 

of Mars. The original was made by f essor Lowell has drawn the ca- 
Schiaparelli. nals of Mars. 



The Planet Mars 



87 




Three of Professor Lowell's photographs of the canals of Mars. 



movement of the head, a rise or fall in the tem- 
perature while making an observation, will 
change the apparent character and location of 
the markings. 



88 Stars Not Inhabited 

In 1874 Prof. Edward E. Barnard, while 
using the large Lick refractor telescope, under 
exceptionally favorable conditions, discovered 
" markings so minute, intricate, and abundant, 
crossing one another in almost every direction, 
that it was impossible to trace them." And 
these lines were more numerous on the so- 
called seas than on dry land, nor were the 
lines straight, but quite noticeably irregular. 
Nor were they black, as other observers had 
thought, but delicately tinted with different 
shades of color. 

Schiaparelli, who may be called the father of 
the canal theory, was himself much perplexed 
at certain phenomena that forced themselves 
upon his attention. 

In his book, " L' Astronomies he writes 

thus: 

" Long dark lines traverse the continents, which 
may be designated Canale, although we do not yet 
know what they are. These lines run from one to 
another of the somber spots which are regarded as 
seas, and form over the lighter, or continental, 
regions a well-defined network. Their arrangement 
seems to be invariable and permanent, at least so 
far as I can judge from four and a half years of obser- y 



The Planet Mars 89 

vat ions. Nevertheless, their aspect and their degree 
of visibility are not always the same, and depend 
upon circumstances which the present state of our 
knowledge does not yet permit us to explain with 
certainty. In 1879, great numbers were seen which 
were not visible in 1877; and in 1882 all those which 
had been seen at former oppositions were found 
again, together with new ones. Sometimes these 
channels present themselves in the form of shadowy 
and vague lines, while on other occasions they are 
clear and precise, like a trace drawn with a pen. . . , 
Every channel terminates at both its extremities in 
a sea, or in another channel; there is not a single 
example of one coming to an end on a continent or in 
the midst of dry land. This is not all. In certain 
seasons these channels become double. This phe- 
nomenon seems to appear at a determinate epoch, to 
be produced simultaneously over the entire surface o) 
the planet's continents. ... 

" A little before the spring equinox, which occurred 
on Mars on the 21st of January, 1880, I noticed the 
doubling of the channel called the Nile between the 
lakes of the moon and the Ceraunic Gulf. These 
two regular, equal, and parallel lines caused me, I 
confess, a profound surprise, the more so because a 
few days earlier, on the 23d and the 24th of Decem- 
ber, I had carefully observed that very region without 
discovering anything of the kind." 

A late dispatch (September 24, 1909), tele- 
graphed by Professor Lowell from the Lowell 
Observatory at Flagstaff, Ariz., announced that 



90 Stars Not Inhabited 

the Antarctic canals are disappearing. This, 
however, is apparently no ground for discour- 
agement to the canal advocates. The explana- 
tion given is that the canals have been con- 
structed to take care of the melting Arctic ice 
floes which otherwise would deluge the land; 
that the belt of vegetation which extends on 
Mars from north to south, instead of from east 
to west, as on the earth, is so abundant at that 
season of the Martian year that it renders the 
waters and the outlines of the canals indistinct 
and undefinable. 

The obvious reply to this last speculation 
is that it is quite incomprehensible that a belt 
of luxuriant vegetation would be more indis- 
tinct thirty-six million miles away, the present 
distance of Mars from the earth (1909), than 
would be the canals themselves. 

(2) Objections to Canal Theory 

Two or three of the several serious objec- 
tions to the canal theory may be of interest. 
As is well known, the foremost advocate at the 
present time of that theory is Professor Lowell, 



The Planet Mars 91 

who adopts it as the basis of his opinion that 
the civilization of Mars is of a very superior 
type. His reasoning is that the Martian canals 
have been constructed by a perishing race 
threatened with a food famine, for the purpose 
of conveying water from the melting snows 
and ice caps of the poles to the waterless 
deserts of the planet near the equator, where 
food crops may be raised, and thus save from 
immediate starvation the unfortunate people. 

a. Difficulty of Forcing Water through the Canals 
The difficulty that would be experienced in 
forcing water through canals for thousands of 
miles over a comparatively level surface is 
quite a troublesome objection to the Lowell 
canal theory. The professor answers the diffi- 
culty, however, by stating that the water is 
pumped artificially. 

The reply manifestly is that there would be 
no end of trouble with most pumping appli- 
ances on a planet whose temperature is con- 
stantly fifty, and during some seasons six hun- 
dred degrees below zero. There are not plumbers 



92 Stars Not Inhabited 

enough on earth, working twelve hours a 
day, to keep the pumps and machinery on that 
planet free from ice and in working condition. 

But, from another point of view, E. Vincent 
Heward, in the Fortnightly Review (August, 
1907) shows the quite impossible task of forcing 
water through canals on the planet Mars : 

" Since gravity upon Mars is but three eighths of 
what it is upon the earth, the atmospheric pressure 
on its surface cannot exceed three thirty-seconds of 
our own, 01 seventy-one millimeters of mercury. 
Under this low pressure water boils at 113 F. If 
the amount of atmosphere on Mars is only one tenth 
as much as that on the earth, which is highly probable, 
the boiling point of water upon the surface of the 
planet would be reduced to 84 F. 

" That the daylight temperature of the surface 
does not differ greatly from our own, we know by 
the rapidity with which the polar ice caps disappear 
on the approach of summer. It would, therefore, 
seem that the evaporation of water from the surface 
must proceed with extraordinary rapidity, and the 
difficulty of transporting it through canals and sup- 
plying sufficient for the needs of vegetation upon the 
way, must be accordingly greatly enhanced." 

In other words, a single Martian day or two, 
if Professor Lowell's opinion as to the physical 
condition of Mars is correct, would be sufficient 



The Planet Mars 93 

to evaporate every drop of water from at least 
the smaller canals, unless of a depth never yet 
claimed for them or unless they were placed 
under cover. 

b. Shape and Size of Martian Canals 

Still another fact standing in the way of a 
ready acceptance of the canal theory is that 
while the markings on Mars, as Professor 
Lowell and others insist, are too straight for 
rivers or for ordinary mountain ranges, as 
such formations appear on the earth and on the 
moon, they are also far too long and broad for 
artificial canals, some of them thousands of 
miles in length and thirty miles in width. And 
each of the four hundred already discovered is 
more than a mile in width, there being no tele- 
scope of sufficient power to discover an object 
on Mars whose dimensions are less than a 
mile. 

And if the markings are straight, this straight- 
ness must be accounted for, since artificial 
canals would not be straight provided there 
were elevations and depressions on the planet. 



94 Stars Not Inhabited 

But it should be said that it is by no means 
generally accepted by astronomers- that the 
markings of Mars consist of straight uniform 
lines. The more powerful the telescope, and 
the more favorable the conditions for observa- 
tion, the less straight and uniform are the lines. 

But whether the canals are on straight lines 
or on curves, larger or smaller, does not enable 
the advocate easily to escape the difficulties 
that would be experienced in excavating them. 

The construction of one of the largest of 
them, if the markings are really canals, and if 
built by intelligent beings, would be a more 
stupendous task than the digging of ten thou- 
sand canals like the one now excavating at 
Panama. And if those Martian inhabitants 
have succeeded in digging canals three or four 
thousand miles long and thirty miles wide, 
then the American Congress might wisely 
appropriate a million dollars to get in touch 
with the remarkable people of this nearby 
planet and learn from them how enterprises of 
such magnitude could have been carried to 
completion. 



The Planet Mars 95 

It should be said, however, that the advo- 
cates of the theory that the inhabitants on 
Mars are digging these enormous canals con- 
tend that such enterprises are easily possible 
on that planet owing to the fact that its 
attraction of gravitation is so much less there 
than on earth that men of large stature 
can jump over tall trees and small men can 
take up a cartload of dirt on a single shovel 
blade. Or, as Professor Lowell puts the case, 
" An elephant on Mars can jump like a gazelle 
on the earth/ ' All of which is exceedingly 
interesting, and may be possible for aught any 
one can say who has not been there. 

But the question arises whether these very 
conditions would not render human life on 
Mars quite inconvenient, if not impossible. 
Certainly this would be the case so far as one 
can now judge. 

LittelVs Living Age (May, 1908), containing 
Dr. Louis Robinson's objection to the theory 
that Mars is a habitable planet, clearly states 
the difficulty thus : 



96 Stars Not Inhabited 

" Popular speculations as to the nature of the 
supposed inhabitants of Mars, which crop up when- 
ever Martian discoveries are announced from Flag- 
staff Observatory and elsewhere, may here be alluded 
to in passing. Whatever the presumed Martians may 
be like, it would certainly be impossible for us, if we 
met one of them, to recognize him as a man and a 
brother. Beings who can perform gigantic labors, 
such as digging of ' canals ' compared with which the 
Mississippi is a mere gutter, with not more than one 
eighth of our atmosphere to breathe, must have a 
chest development which would distort them out of 
all semblance to humanity, while the low force of 
gravity in Mars would enable people of average 
weight to get about on legs not much stouter than 
those of a collie dog. According to some careful ob- 
servers, such as Professor Campbell of the Lick Ob- 
servatory, it is even an open question whether Mars 
has any more atmosphere than the moon. More 
than this, certain leading physicists quoted by Mr. 
Alfred Russel Wallace have declared that no oxygen, 
hydrogen, or water could exist on so small a world 
without being dissipated into space and sucked up 
by ourselves and the sun. Hence it has been suggested 
that the ' polar snow caps ' of Mars may consist of 
solid carbonic acid gas. From this point of view our 
Martian neighbors must subsist upon an atmospheric 
regimen of carbonic acid instead of upon one of air, 
and hence would be more likely to resemble trees in 
their physical constitution than the higher animals. 
Such a notion opens up an inviting field for imagina- 
tive writers." 



The Planet Mars 97 

c. Small Amount of Water on Mars 

When confronted with the objection that 
there is far too little water on Mars to fill half 
the larger canals, to say nothing of the sup- 
posed many reservoirs and smaller canals not 
yet traced on Martian charts, Professor Lowell 
replies by calling attention to the evident 
melting of the polar caps of Mars. 

Then the rejoinder comes that the polar 
caps appear to be merely carbonic acid snow, 
the melting of which would not produce water, 
but gas merely, and that the suddenness with 
which the so-called, snow caps disappear would 
indicate " that at most they are scarcely more 
than a slight layer of hoar frost." 

There is offered the information by Professor 
Lowell that his coworkers, Messrs. Slipher and 
Lampland, of Flagstaff Observatory, have se- 
cured photographic spectra of Mars that show 
lines of water vapor. 

But the reply to this discovery is soundly 
scientific from both atmospheric and optical 
points of view. It is stated thus : 

Since broken light rays traversing the air 



98 Stars Not Inhabited 

are always present, and the luminous quiver- 
ings under strong magnifying power render 
minute inspection almost impossible, it fol- 
lows that accurate telescopic delineation of 
objects in far-off space may affect photographic 
plates in the same manner as it does the retina 
of the human eye. This, of course, discounts 
the observations of Slipher and Lampland 
that at first were very helpful to Professor 
Lowell. 

Professor Barnard at the Lick Observatory 
obtained not long since views disclosing intricate 
lines and gray-green patches that preclude the 
idea of water canals. And Professor Camp- 
bell's spectroscopic investigations, assured by 
the clearness with which the details of the 
planet's surface were seen by him, lead to the 
same conclusion. 

Other scientists have been diligent students 
in this field of chemical astronomy. Cassini, 
Sir James South, Dr. Daws, Johnstone Stoney, 
with observations extending over a half cen- 
tury, have not been able to detect the presence 
of even water vapor on the planet. 



The Planet Mars 99 

And Professor Lowell himself is forced to 
make a confession, helpful in some respects to 
his theory, that five eighths of the surface of 
Mars is an arid waste. " Mars as the Abode 
of Life" (1908). 

. d. Halo and Other Illusions 

But the troubles confronting the advocates 

of canals on Mars have not yet been fully 

enumerated. By recent delicate and patient 

experiments and observations, Prof. Andrew 

E. Douglass, of the University of Arizona, has 

established the fact that many of the markings 

on Mars, especially the fainter ones and those 

radiating from the spots called lakes or oceans, 

are the product of " halo illusions " and " ray 

illusions " that result, in some instances, from 

a fundamental defect in the human eye and at 

other times from imperfections in the telescopes 

employed. 

In the Popular Science Monthly (May, 1908), 

Professor Douglass states the case thus : 

" In the larger markings, and even in the larger 
canals, conflicts of evidence do occur, but are never 
troublesome. One may confidently say that such 



ioo Stars Not Inhabited 

realities do exist. But with the very faint canals, 
whose numbers reach occasionally well into the 
hundreds, discordance reigns supreme, and it is fre- 
quently found that different drawings by the same 
artist antagonize each other across the page. 

" The ray illusion is to me a very satisfactory 
explanation of many faint canals radiating from 
those small spots on Mars called * lakes' or ' oases/ 
The only objective reality in such cases is the spot 
from which they start. So when two lakes or oases 
lie along such a line they will appear connected by a 
canal. . . . 

" Thus in conclusion we see that there are funda- 
mental defects in the human eye, producing faint 
canal illusions, and that these have worked serious 
injury to our observations." 

Professor Proctor also regarded the lines 
seen when Mars is under telescopic inspection 
as an effect of diffraction. And Flammarion 
thinks it possible that " the companion canals 
may, under special circumstances, be evoked 
by refraction as a kind of mirage." 

In order scientifically to settle the question 
whether the finer markings and some of the 
double lines on Mars are optical illusions or 
psychological phenomena, E. W. Maunder, of 
the Greenwich Observatory, and J. E. Evans, 
of the Royal Hospital School at Greenwich, 



The Planet Mars 101 

made experiments (1902) that were reported 
to the Royal Astronomical Society, June, 1903. 
The subjects were schoolboys from the hospital. 
They were placed at different distances from 
certain markings. Then in turn each was called 
upon to report what had been seen. 

The result of these experiments was conclu- 
sive evidence to Maunder and Evans that " the 
so-called canals are an optical effect of compli- 
cated surface details, too minute to be seen in 
their true shape." 

Candor, however, calls for the statement 
that Flammarion repeated the experiment with 
some French boys that, to his mind, was not 
as conclusive as those obtained with the 
English boys. 

But, fortunately, experiments like the fore- 
going are within easy reach of any one who 
cares to make them. 

The author is indebted to the Fortnightly 
Review for the following directions in making 
the experiment : 

11 Put on a piece of paper a series of dots or lines, 
say an eighth of an inch apart, and at a distance of 



102 



Stars Not Inhabited 



thirty feet they will look merely as a continuous line. 
Or, if a considerable number of dots and lines be 
scattered over a sheet of paper, without any attempt 
at regular arrangement, and one should look at them 
at a distance of thirty feet, a careful scrutiny would 
quite probably show a seeming connection between 
the larger dots, which upon a drawing would be repre- 
sented by straight lines. 



m tun ii mii ffl 



This series of dots at a distance of thirty feet 
appears to be a continuous line. 










, :7 - 






7^ 







Fig. i 



Fig. 2 



Irregular markings, such as are shown in Fig. i, when seen from a dis- 
tance of 30 feet, resemble the canals of Fig. 2. 

Or, if one experiments with markings or 
cracks of any kind, the discovery will be made 



The Planet Mars 



io 3 



that straight lines become crooked and irregu- 
lar and surface lines are increased in proportion 
as the power of vision is increased. 




Pieces of broken crockery brought 
together when looked at from a dis- 
tance of several feet. 




The same crockery on a nearer The same crockery on closer 

approach. inspection. 



The astronomer without the aid of other 
scientists cannot, therefore, determine what 
the markings on Mars really are. He must 
take into his confidence the oculist and anato- 



104 Stars Not Inhabited 

mist before he can solve the problem of " eye 
illusions." He must confer with the psycholo- 
gist, and together they must work out the 
problem of mental illusions and decide whether 
the thing seen is real, or only a " camera ghost " 
formed by the lens surfaces of the eye, or an 
" optical phantasmagoria " resulting from a 
fixed gaze. He needs likewise the help of the 
mathematician in order to determine the effect 
of distances in planetic phenomena. And the 
telescope maker must determine for him to 
what extent any small object on a planet, such 
as the markings on Mars, is the product of 
the telescope itself. With the use of more power- 
ful telescopes and under improved conditions of 
observation it would not be surprising if mark- 
ings on Venus and Mercury will be discovered 
that are as nearly identical with those on Mars 
as the " personal equation," that is, differences 
of vision in different persons, will allow. If 
such shall be the case, the canals of Mars will 
lose caste and find their place among the curi- 
osities of astronomical literature and specula- 
tions. 



The Planet Mars 105 

e. Play of the Imagination 

Quite as much as anything else the astrono- 
mer must guard against the play of the. imagi- 
nation, which easily can convert a distant vol- 
canic fissure with its lights and shadows into 
an artificial canal bordered either by native 
forests or the garden truck of the husbandman. 

In 1830 Sir John Herschel gave way to his 
imagination, ascribing the redness of Mars' 
light to an inherent peculiarity of the soil. 

It was just as rational for Flammarion to 
attribute the redness to " ripe cornfields.' ' 
And it is generally known and commented 
upon by astronomers that Professor Lowell's 
imagination serves him such a fortunate or 
unfortunate turn that he is able to see mark- 
ings on Mars that no one else has been able to 
see, and he can see " the waters of the periodi- 
cally melting polar snows carried along canals 
to barren, thirsty plains, while all along the 
banks of the flowing streams are luxuriant 
growths of vegetation, thus rendering their 
course clear and well defined." 

Such conceptions are poetry of rather high 
order, but can they be pronounced scientific ? 



io6 Stars Not Inhabited 

(3) Opinions of Scientists Opposed to the 
Canal Theory 

In general it is to be said that the majority 
of astronomers interested in the planet Mars 
incline to the opinion that the so-called canals 
are due to volcanic cracks lying between 
craterlets on the surface of the planet. 

Professor Pickering, director of Harvard 
College Observatory, who has made a careful 
study of the markings of the planet, and is as 
well qualified to judge of their character as any 
other astronomer or planetologist, in a recent 
address before the Beacon Society in Boston 
(1908), gave as his opinion that they are not 
canals in any sense, nor even water courses, 
but are probably volcanic fissures. 

The following is Professor Pickering's rea- 
soning on this subject: 

1 ' It does not seem to me and many other astrono- 
mers that these markings are sufficient evidence of a 
state of civilization on the planet. They may look 
artificial as produced in the drawings that show what 
the eye sees when it gazes through a lens focused on 
some sections of Mars. It should be remembered, 
however, that if the planet were seen better the mark- 
ings might not look artificial at all. 



The Planet Mars 107 

" Nor is it necessary to invoke the aid of some 
form of civilization to explain the canals and other 
phenomena that have been observed on Mars. It 
may be that the canals are due to volcanic cracks 
lying between craterlets on the Martian surface. 

" There are canals in the moon which, examined 
through a small telescope, are not to be distinguished 
in appearance from those seen through a larger tele- 
scope on Mars. Looking at the lunar canals through 
a large telescope, the craterlets and cracks about 
which the lunar lakes and canals are formed can be 
seen distinctly, and the gradual transformation of a 
crack into a canal has been watched, and the rate of 
growth of the canal measured. 

" In Hawaii there are similar natural cracks which 
have been studied and photographed.' ' 

Speaking of a large and expensive observatory 
that might be built for the purpose of settling 
some questions now in dispute, the professor 
employs these words : 

"I do not feel that we know enough about the 
planet as yet to spend much money in signaling to 
possible inhabitants. 

" That is one of the things which an observatory 
such as I suggest might determine — whether or not 
these canals are natural or artificial; whether they 
are really straight or merely appear so because of 
the inconceivable distances through which we see 
them. ,, 



108 Stars Xot Inhabited 

Another scientist who rejects the canal 
theory, Prof. W. W. Campbell, director of the 
Lick Observatory, California, in a review of 
Professor Lowell's book, " Mars and Its Canals," 
(1906) speaks thus: 

11 If the visible canals are due to irrigated vegeta- 
tion in strips thirty to sixty and more miles wide, 
traversing the planet's surface in straight lines in 
every direction, all the canals hundreds and many of 
them thousands of miles long, from four to ten 
canals radiating from a common point, intersecting 
at all angles a great many other canals radiating 
from other centers, how is the water distributed over 
this large and complex area? It starts from the 
polar snows, we are told, and flows thousands of 
miles to and beyond the torrid zone, spreading in a 
general way over the whole planet. Do these streams 
lie in the valleys, or on the slopes and ridges? There 
is no evidence whatever that the surface is remarkably 
level. The canals, apparently, do not turn aside for 
anything. The path of least resistance seems to be 
unknown. 

" The crater Tycho, on our moon, is the center of a 
system of markings, radiating in all directions in 
straight lines, hundreds and thousands of miles. 
They cross hills and valleys with perfect indifference. 
Now because they are straight and radiate from a 
center, did they, therefore, have an intelligent per- 
sonal origin?'' (Science, August, 1908.) 

No observations made of the planet Mars 



The Planet Mars 109 

during the summer and autumn, 1907, were of 
greater interest, from some points of view, 
than those by Professor Campbell. His spec- 
troscopic scrutiny led him to conclude, that the 
planet possesses only about as much atmosphere 
as our moon, which is generally believed to be 
scarcely any at all; that the Schiaparelli- 
Lowell canals " are not handiwork; that there 
is no Martian cloud system; that little if any 
watery vapor exists around Mars, and that the 
existence of polar caps does not prove the 
presence of water on Mars." 

In an Associated Press dispatch from San 
Francisco, September 16, 1909, Professor Camp- 
bell makes these additional statements : 

" There is no single scrap of evidence that Mars is 
inhabited. I do not regard the so-called canals and 
other markings as evidence of man's work. It is 
possible that specks, looking like clouds, have been 
seen at widely separated periods, perhaps months 
apart, but they are not clouds." 

In view of Professor Lowell's opinion that 
the changes on Mars are indicative that 
intelligent beings inhabit the planet, Professor 



I io Stars Not Inhabited 

Campbell speaks thus, " I need only say that 
an observer outside of the earth, looking down, 
would see seasonal changes quite as well before 
the advent of man as after." 

With the exception of Professor Flammarion, 
who is scarcely more of an astronomer than he 
is a writer of astronomical poetry and romance, 
the scientists of France do not accept the 
speculations of Professors Schiaparelli and 
Lowell. 

Dr. Charles Andre, who may be taken as 
representative of French astronomers, does not 
believe that " there are any canals save in the 
optical illusions of the observer and in possible 
tricks played by waves of light with photo- 
graphic instruments." 

At a meeting of the British Astronomical 
Association (December 29, 1909), reported in a 
dispatch to New York from the London Times, 
December 30, several astronomers expressed 
their doubts as to the existence of canals on 
Mars. 

Prof. S. A. Saunders exhibited lantern slides 
of photographs of Mars taken by Professor Hale 



The Planet Mars in 

by means of the great telescope at Mt. Wilson 
Observatory. He facetiously remarked " that 
the canals were not shown, the explanation 
being that the telescope was too strong to indi- 
cate them." 

A report from M. Antoniadi was read before 
the association, in which it was shown " that 
the supposed canals are explained by the 
effect on the eye of patterns of dark spots, and 
there is no doubt that a genuine canal on Mars 
has never been seen." 

Edward Walter Maunder, of the Greenwich 
Observatory, spoke in support of Antoniadi' s 
conclusion, saying that "there was never any 
real ground for supposing that there is any 
evidence of artificial markings on Mars, and it 
was better for science that the idea had been 
disposed of." 

When informed of this dispatch, Professor 
Lowell is reported to have made this very sin- 
gular, unsatisfactory, and rather ungracious 
reply: " It doesn't interest me in the least. I 
am very sorry for them." 



ii2 Stars Not Inhabited 

(4) Perplexities and Uncertainties 
Nor are the markings of Mars the only un- 
certainties to be considered. Whether the 
white spots are collections of frozen carbonic 
acid, steam, snow, hoar frost, clouds, or some- 
thing else, is not yet determined. Whether the 
redness of the planet comes from surface soils 
or from dust storms in the air is an unanswered 
question. 

Why the canals are double and parallel; or 
why the markings cross each other in " an 
intricate network," and why they cross both 
land and what had been thought to be water, 
now regarded as old sea bottoms, or possibly 
oases in sandy deserts, are questions by no 
means yet settled. 

The supposition that the larger markings are 
furrows plowed by meteors, " or grooves cut by 
colliding asteroids " that struck the planet 
before it had cooled into hardness, or are cracks 
in a universal covering of ice, may be fanciful, 
but are just as reasonable as nine tenths 
of the recent speculations concerning their 
formation. 10 



The Planet Mars 113 

The wisest conclusion would seem to be this : 
that no one is yet prepared to say just what 
the markings are, or how they were made. 
The probabilities appear to be that they are 
neither supernatural nor artificial, but in every 
respect are natural phenomena, and though 
in planetary formation they appear somewhat 
unusual, they are not altogether so. 

A late dispatch from Flagstaff (November 
28, 1909) mentions the following remarkable 
discovery : 

11 Prof. Percival Lowell reports the two new canals 
on Mars were first seen on September 29 and 30, one on 
the former and both on the latter date. They run, the 
one from the northern tip of the Syrtis Major, the 
other from a little south along the Syrtis east side 
southwest, converging in an oasis on the Cocytus in 
direct line to the Syrtis Minor, and were then and are 
now the most conspicuous canals in that part of the 
planet. 

' They are fine, perfectly regular lines, more so 
than is possible for freehand drawing to reproduce. 
Neither of them was ever seen before September 29, 
although the region has been minutely scanned here 
at every observation since 1894, and by Schiaparelli 
before that, back to 1877, and a canal of their 
size could not possibly have existed and not been 
seen. 



ii4 Stars Not Inhabited 

" The development of the canal system has pro- 
gressed regularly down the disk from April [1909] to 
the present moment. Canals never before seen have 
appeared, conspicuous and persistent. This very im- 
portant detection shows that what we see as canals is 
undergoing construction or adaptation at the present 
moment." 

Essentially the same announcements were 
made by Professor Lowell, December 31, in 
Boston, before the " American Association for 
the Advancement of Science/' choosing for his 
subject, " The Canali Novae of Mars." 

The address was fully reported, but the au- 
thor, being present, was not dependent upon the 
reports of others for his information. 

Incidentally, the professor remarked that at 
the Flagstaff Observatory four hundred canals 
had been discovered in the last fifteen years, 
and that since the time of Schiaparelli between 
five and six hundred have been mapped. 

Among the claims made by Professor Lowell 
are the following: That no canals on Mars are 
more conspicuous than these named by him 
"Canali Novae"; that they never had been 
seen by human eye previous to September 29, 



The Planet Mars 



115 



1909; that before that date they had been not 
only not seen, but had been non-existent; that 
11 they were not only new to us, but were new 
to Mars " ; that they have the same character- 
istics as belong to the entire canal system of 
Mars ; that ' ' their forma tion v is impossible by 
any kind of natural creation, and the present 
phenomena show that the canals are still in 
process of creation, that we have actually seen 
some formed under our very eyes. The phe- 
nomena transcend any natural law, and are 
only explicable so far as can be seen by the 
presence out yonder of animate will." 

It is not transparently clear what the pro- 
fessor means by the term " animate will." It 
may signify a supernatural will, a human will, 
or the will of an organized being of any kind. 
We presume there is meant the will of some 
being resembling mankind, otherwise the pro- 
fessor will be called upon to reconstruct many 
of his pronouncements as to Mars and its canal 
systems. 

Curiosity is likewise excited to learn what 
explanation the professor has to offer for the 



n6 Stars Not Inhabited 

sudden appearance of these new canals, miles 
in width and many hundreds of miles in length. 
Have they been dug in a day or night, by the 
enterprising, desperate, and mighty inhabitants 
of Mars? 

Should our professor say that these appear- 
ances are canals bordered by vegetation, the 
fitting reply would be that such vast fields of 
vegetation springing up in a brief space of 
time, where for hundreds of years there never 
had been a sign of vegetation, would be a most 
marvelous phenomenon, certainly impossible on 
the earth. 

But suppose these sudden changes have 
taken place; it would not, of necessity, follow 
that human agency or anything like it need be 
called for. 

There were, as Professor Campbell suggests, 
stupendous changes taking place on earth — 
mountain ranges forming, streams flowing, 
vegetation springing up — long before a human 
being walked the earth. 

In a word, there are so many uncertainties 
as to the phenomena of Mars that dogmatism 



The Planet Mars 117 

is at present entirely unwarranted. With tele- 
scopes of increased power there may be dis- 
covered a thousand or ten thousand transverse 
markings or fissures not yet seen that will 
quite entirely change many speculations now in 
vogue. 

(5) Other Recently Noticed Phenomena 

October 28, 1909, a cable from London re- 
ported that scientists, according to the Journal 
of the British Astronomical Association, have 
observed on Mars a cataclysm that ' ' may have 
unlocked forces that ended forever the bitter and 
centuries long struggles for life " on the part of 
the Martian people. 

Two months earlier the southern polar cap 
of Mars was observed to have been fractured. 
A dark streak ran all the way across it. About 
the same time a brilliant spot separated itself 
from the polar cap and covered one of the 
dusky areas in Mars, partly hiding it from 
view. 

Professor Lowell, however, sees in these 
phenomena no catastrophe, but offers the 



n8 Stars Not Inhabited 

opinion that what has been observed is the 
result of dust storms, producing, however, no 
change of physical conditions on the planet's 
surface. And apparently to his mind whatever 
changes take place indicate that the Martians, 
instead of being destroyed by some awful and 
deadly catastrophe, are rushing the work on 
the canals in every way possible and with 
renewed energy, in order to lengthen the struggle 
for existence a while longer. 

(6) A Last Chance 

Mars was nearest the earth September 24, 
1 909 . Her population, if the planet is inhabited, 
must be in desperate straits. None of them can 
stand the struggle much longer. The conclusion 
would seem to be that if they allow this year's 
conjunction (1909) to pass without successfully 
sending signals of distress to the earth, they will 
have lost their last chance and must henceforth 
hold their peace till the end comes. And 
assuredly those who believe that Mars is 
inhabited by intelligent beings ought to have 
for them the profoundest compassion. 



The Planet Mars 119 

They have been spending much if not their 
entire time, centuries upon centuries, in trying 
to attract our attention and in digging canals 
and fighting the inevitable in efforts to prolong 
their miserable existence, having dismissed all 
political, social, and educational questions, 
national and international disputes, everything, 
in fact, that is of interest to intelligent beings, 
centering every thought and effort on the one 
momentous and vital problem of postponing 
the day of doom. 

(7) Saner Conclusions 

But possibly our sympathy is wasted. 
There are no slowly perishing people on Mars. 
Nature's way, or rather the way of Providence, 
is not to kill off a race of living things or beings 
piecemeal, but usually, if not always, by sudden 
onslaughts. Geological history abundantly jus- 
tifies these statements. So will it be also when 
the mission of the human race shall have been 
accomplished (Matt. 24: 37-39 ; 2 Peter 3 : 5-12). 

Everything considered, it would seem that 
one's mind must be exceedingly warped by 



120 Stars Not Inhabited 

predispositions when representing that the 
markings on Mars are evidence of intelligent 
organized life. Nor need one have the slightest 
hesitation in saying that Professor Schiaparelli, 
Professor Lowell, and all other advocates of 
canals and inhabitants on the planet Mars are 
without one single well-established fact in sup- 
port of their theory. 

When, therefore, in the recent publication 
already referred to, it is claimed to be the 
1 ' rational idea" to believe that the planet 
Mars is inhabited by people or beings who are 
" not much unlike those on the earth," and 
that " we must interpret Mars by what is 
found on our earth," one is forced to reply that 
such conceptions and statements, from a scien- 
tific point of view, never have been less rational 
than at this very moment. 

One is more than half inclined to pass upon 
some of these recent speculations the judgment 
of Professor Sedgwick used of other unscientific 
theories, " They are the raving madness of 
hypothetical extravagance." 



Mercury and Venus 121 

6. Mercury and Venus 

These two interior planets need not long 
detain us. Mercury, called " the swift-moving 
planet/ ' is far along in its decrepitude and is 
so small that its attractive power is not suffi- 
cient to retain on its surface even water vapor, 
the lightest constituent in our atmosphere. 

It is difficult, therefore, to imagine any form of 
organized life, at any period in the history of this 
planet, that could have existed on its surface. 

Not precisely the same can be said of Venus, 
11 the Shepherd's Star" to the Eastern people, 
and to us the queen of the morning and evening. 
It comes nearer to the earth than any other 
heavenly body excepting the moon, meteors, an 
occasional comet, and the planetoid Eros, but 
for several reasons has not been so carefully 
observed as Mars. 

Its diameter is only two hundred miles less 
than that of the earth, being seven thousand 
seven hundred miles, as compared with the 
earth's seven thousand nine hundred. Its 
mass is a little over three quarters that of the 
earth, with an average density representing 



122 Stars Not Inhabited 

about eighty-six per cent of the terrestrial 
density. 

So that Venus, as Professor Young, of 
Princeton, very happily has said, is " the 
earth's twin sister in magnitude, density, and 
general constitution." 

While Bielopolsky, Andre, Kansky, and 
Stephanik think they have discovered indica- 
tions of days and nights on Venus, like those of 
the earth, yet the opinion is almost unanimous 
that both Venus and Mercury, like the moon, 
have no alternation of day and night. 

The late announcement from Flagstaff, De- 
cember, 1909, made by Professor Lowell, 
based upon careful spectroscopic and telescopic 
observations, establishes, at least for the 
present, the generally received opinion first 
announced by Schiaparelli (1878), that both 
Mercury and Venus turn perpetually the same 
hemisphere to the sun, so that " one side is 
forever baked, the other forever frozen.' ' 

It is a matter of some surprise that though 
Professor Lowell makes no claim that Venus is 
inhabitable, as one might expect, yet N. W. 



Mercury and Venus 123 

Mumford, in his book, " Popular Astronomy/ ' 
suggests at this late day the possibility of ani- 
mate existences on that planet. This is what 
he says : 

" But let it be granted that the rotation of Venus 
has been determined at the rate of once in the Venu- 
sian year. In the gradual slowing down of the 
planet's rotation through the ages, would not the 
intelligence of her inhabitants have risen steadily to 
each occasion's height, and have met finally the last 
catastrophe when the scorched and barren hemisphere 
forever faced the sun? 

" Here, in reality also, we cannot begin to specu- 
late on the outward form of the Venusian man. In 
much diminished numbers and of slight physique, he 
was driven back, first to the poles for water and 
coolness, from thence to spread once more over his 
planet in the twilight zone of perpetual spring when, 
for him, rotation had ceased. On one side of him lies 
half a world, a veritable furnace, and on the other, 
eternal night that binds the hemisphere in an iron 
frost that no life can endure. 

" Between the two he is reconciled to a life strange 
enough, indeed, to human conception." n 

But suppose there is a belt " between the 
two separate regions of continued day and 
night, " a twilight zone of perpetual spring,' ' 
where, so far as temperature is concerned, 
living things could possibly exist, should it not 



124 Stars Not Inhabited 

have occurred to the advocate of life on Venus 
that no inhabitant there could enjoy this over- 
spread " rose-flushed light " for two minutes? 
A comparatively narrow belt lying between 
temperatures hundreds of degrees below zero 
on one side and intolerable blazing furnace heat 
on the other, would subject that belt to per- 
petual and terrific cyclones, wilder and more 
devastating than any known on earth, provided 
there is any atmosphere. The imaginary Venu- 
sians would be forced to live in caves and dens 
and never be permitted to lift their heads 
above the surface of the planet lest they should 
be whipped off by windstorms that travel six 
hundred miles an hour. 

In a word, if the probabilities are that Mars 
is uninhabitable, which certainly is the case, 
then the probabilities are immensely increased 
that both Mercury and Venus are and always 
have been silent as an empty tomb, and will so 
remain until the day dawns that shall witness 
the wreck of the planetary system. 

But even if Venus is without inhabitant, has 
it, therefore, no mission service? In a northern 



Mercury and Venus 125 

winter night, when the planet seems almost 
within touch as it falls in the western sky, is 
not the dullest beholder quite spellbound by its 
beauty and silent charm? 

Professor Lowell suggests an intellectual if 
not an ethical purpose in the brilliancy of " the 
earth's twin sister " : 

' The picture of Venus thus presented to our gaze 
may seem forbidding — one hemisphere a torrid 
desert, the other deserted ice. Which side strikes us 
as the worse is a matter of personal predilection. 
But the portrait has its grand features for all that; 
features which give us a new conception of what 
exists in the universe and lure our thought afield in 
space with all the greater insistence for being drawn, 
not from fancy but from fact." 



IV. PHYSICAL CONDITION OF SOME OF THE 
HEAVENLY BODIES (CONTINUED) 

i. Other Suns and Their Supposed Planets 

Though the sun, moon, Jupiter, Mars, and 
the other planets of the solar system are not 
inhabited or inhabitable, it does not follow, 
say the advocates of a plurality of worlds, that 
there may not be planets, invisible to eye or 
telescope, that revolve about some of the so- 
called fixed stars and, like the earth, are in con- 
dition to be the dwelling places of intelligent 
beings not much unlike mankind. 

(i) Some of the More Familiar 

Constellations 

Astronomers of the last century discoursed 

enthusiastically and with good reason upon the 

glories of the star systems and constellations 

pictured on the sky. 

They pointed to Orion with its remarkable 

nebula, its flaming belt and sword studded 

with stars of the first and second magnitude, 

126 



Other Suns 127 

and asked if there may not be a thousand 
planets suited to organized life that revolve 
about those many majestic and mighty suns 
that make up the galaxy of Orion ? 

They also called attention to the brilliant 
constellation of the Lion, with its several score 
of flaming suns, each immensely larger than 
our own, and the question followed: May 
there not be another thousand planets, or even 
a larger number, revolving about the suns that 
make up that constellation, planets which, 
though invisible to any telescope, may be 
perfectly adapted to human life? 

And from Orion and the Lion those astrono- 
mers pointed to the constellation of the Great 
Bear, that for all peoples in northern latitudes 
faithfully locates" the polar star, and asked if 
each of those flashing suns of the Bear (or Dip- 
per) may not be surrounded by planets and 
satellites inhabited by intelligences possibly 
far superior to any who dwell on the earth ? 

And, likewise, they asked if the majestic 
stars that constitute the Southern Cross, beau- 
tiful, suggestive, and familiar to all who sail the 



128 Stars Not Inhabited 

southern seas, and if the stars belonging to the 
Northern Cross, and to all other constellations, 
may not have planets, many thousand multi- 
plied by many more thousand, revolving about 
them, on each of which are the happiest and 
most royal intelligences in the whole physical 
universe ? 

Those astronomers of the last century were 
accustomed to ask if any reason can be given 
why the other numbered and unnumbered star 
systems that make up the endless multitude of 
worlds may not have billions upon billions of 
planets suited to living organisms, and be 
covered more densely than the earth with 
intelligent and supremely happy beings ? 12 

Dr. Thomas Chalmers, in his "Astronomical 
Discourses " (1817), is forcefully brilliant and 
realistic in his conception of the dwellers 'on the 
planets that he supposes are revolving about 
the fixed stars : 

" Though this earth and these heavens were to 
disappear, there are other worlds which roll afar ; the 
light of other suns shines upon them, and the sky 
which mantles them is garnished with other stars. 

"Is it presumption to say that the moral world 



Other Suns 129 

extends to these distant and unknown regions; that 
they are occupied with people; that the charities of 
home and of neighborhood flourish there; that the 
praises of God are there lifted up, and his goodness 
rejoiced in; that piety has there its temples and its 
offerings, and that the richness of the divine attri- 
butes is there felt and admired by intelligent wor- 
shipers? " 

And Sir David Brewster, in the volume 
already referred to, speaking of the stars as the 
homes of the blessed dead, becomes almost a 
rhapsodist : 

" Scripture has not spoken with an articulate voice 
of the future locality of the blest, but reason has 
combined the scattered utterances of inspiration, and 
with a voice almost oracular has declared that He 
who made the worlds will in the worlds which He 
has made place the beings of His choice; reason 
compels us to believe that the material body which 
is to be raised must be subject to material laws and 
reside in a material home, — a house of many man- 
sions. 

" In what regions of space these mansions are 
built, on what sphere the moldering dust is to be 
gathered and revived, and by what process it is to 
reach its destination, reason does not enable us to 
determine, but it is impossible for immortal man, 
with the light of revelation as his guide, to doubt for 
a moment that on the celestial spheres his future is to 
be spent, doubtless, in lofty inquiries, in social inter- 



130 Stars Not Inhabited 

course, in the renewal of domestic ties, and in the 
service of his almighty Benefactor. With such a 
vista before us, so wide in its expanse, and so remote 
in its termination, what scenes of beauty, what forms 
of the sublime, what enjoyments, physical and intel- 
lectual, may we not anticipate, — wisdom to the sage, 
rest to the pilgrim, and gladness to the broken heart! " 

The " Milky Way," supposed to contain the 
most distant stars, known among the Norsemen 
as " the path to Valhalla/ ' among the Swedish 
peasantry as the " Winter Street," and among 
the Germans as " Jacob's Road," a simile for 
the ladder that the patriarch saw in his dream, 
has been thought of, among many peoples and 
from early times, as the path by which departing 
souls reach the starry realms that are beyond and 
that are to be the future abode of human souls. 

W. H. Hayne in his " Indian Fancy " sings: 

" I think between the midnight and the dawn 
Souls pass through you to their mysterious home." 

Dionysius Exignus, chronologist of the sixth 
century, assigned to the cherubim the dominion 
of the fixed stars. And Milton's conception was 
that the dwellers on the stars are beings betwixt 
angelic and human kind. 



Other Suns 131 

(2) Significant Facts as to the Stars 
a. Double, Variable, and Temporary 

There are three thousand so-called double 
stars, or two suns closely associated. If such 
suns have planets they would receive periodi- 
cally the heat and light of two suns both near, 
then the heat and light of one sun that might be 
very near and the other very distant. 

Now, one can conjecture all sorts of things, but 
biological science knows of no kind of life that 
could survive such changes of temperature as 
would be inevitable on the supposed but im- 
probable planets of the double stars. 

There is another extensive and well-known 
class of heavenly bodies that on account of 
changes in their brightness are called variable 
stars. The star Algol in Persei, for instance, 
varies in brightness from the second to the 
fourth magnitude and back again in the short 
period of less than three days. The star Lyrae 
varies from the third to the fifth magnitude and 
comes back to the third again in less than a 
week. Omicron, or Mira Ceti, varies from the 
second magnitude to complete invisibility, but 



132 Stars Not Inhabited 

reappears and comes up to the second magni- 
tude again in three hundred and thirty-four 
days. Argus varies from one of the brightest 
stars of the first magnitude to a most inconsider- 
able one of the fourth magnitude, and blazes out 
again up to the first magnitude in about forty- 
six years, and R. Cephei varies from the fifth 
magnitude down to the eleventh, visible only in 
a very powerful telescope, and returns to the 
fifth (which is visible to the naked eye) in about 
seventy- three years. 

February 22, 1891, Dr. T. D. Anderson, of 
Edinburgh, announced the discovery of a new 
and remarkable star, since named Nova Persei. 
It immediately began to increase in brightness, 
and changed from the tenth to the first magni- 
tude in two days. Here manifestly must have 
been an enormous increase of temperature. 

A dispatch by Director Campbell from Lick 
Observatory, dated February 26, reported that 
this star had diminished in brightness about 
one fifth in twenty -four hours. 

The star Arcturus, mentioned in the book of 
Job thirty centuries ago, — 



Other Suns 133 

" Which maketh Arcturus, 
Orion, and Pleiades, and the chambers of the south," 

is also of great interest to astronomers. It is 
the brightest star in the northern sky and the 
brightest in the heavens, except Sirius, which 
has an intrinsic brightness sixty-three and one- 
half times greater than that of the sun, and there 
is added interest in the fact that the spectro- 
scope has shown that many of the elementary 
substances with which scientists are acquainted 
are found in Arcturus, which is also doubtless 
true of all the other shining stars in the astro- 
nomical heavens. 13 

Now suppose any of these millions of suns, 
constituted of elements like those in our own 
sun, are attended by planets, some of w T hich are 
worn out, like Mars and the moon ; others, like 
Jupiter, being of a temperature so high that no 
life can exist on them ; and suppose there are 
still others that could at this moment support 
such life, vegetable, animal, and human, as is 
found on the earth, what would befall things that 
are alive on the most favorably located of these 
planets if subjected to the appalling changes 



134 Stars Not Inhabited 

that must take place when a sun in a few hours 
or days increases or lowers its temperature very 
many degrees ? For instance, if the temperature 
of the tropical seas of our earth should be low- 
ered only ten degrees, millions of organisms 
would die from lack of heat and millions more 
for lack of food. Or if the normal temperature 
were much raised, arctic sea life would suffer 
the same fate. Nor would changes of tempera- 
ture on the earth's surface need to be very great 
in order to destroy every living thing. But the 
changes on some of the variable stars give an 
increase in temperature of ten thousand fold, 
and this within the space of a few hours. What 
sort of organic existence could, therefore, face 
these changes and live? And what better off 
would be the planets that accompany those 
suns that, so far as is known, have forever dis- 
appeared from the heavens ? 14 

A scientific writer, speaking of the star Nova 
Persei, employs these suggestive words : 

" If that star had been accompanied by a train of 
planets, what a fearful fate was theirs! It may be 
ours to-morrow — who can tell? Shall we pass it off 
with a laugh? Let us stop a moment in our making 



Other Suns 135 

of love, of money, of fame, and say, Somewhere, 
somehow, a sun has set, and the consequences to 
some one, we know not who, have been literally over- 
whelming. The sign of it is in the sky." 

But aside from ruling the double, variable, 
and temporary stars and their planets out of the 
list of habitable worlds, it should also be said, as 
suggested by Dr. Alfred Russel Wallace, that 
while many of the brightest stars are much 
larger than our sun, there are probably many 
times as many more that, " being much smaller, 
are unsuited to yield adequate light and heat for 
a sufficient time and with sufficient uniformity 
for life development on planets. In given re- 
gions of the universe, such as the Milky Way, 
life is rendered impossible by enormous heat and 
excessive formative activity.' ' 

b. Number, Magnitude, and Distances 
The purpose in view calls for a brief statement 

as to the number, magnitude, and distances of 

the stars, 
(a) Number. 
As is well known, the largest telescopes have 

revealed seventy-seven million stars, and. 



136 Stars Not Inhabited 

counting the nebulae, it is estimated there are 
three billion worlds now known. The Milky- 
Way alone contains one hundred million. In 
the beautiful constellation of the Swan, or 
Northern Cross, there are three hundred and 
sixty -five thousand stars in the neck between 
the two bright stars Sadr and Albireo. And 
no astronomer imagines that the limit of the 
number of stars in any direction has been 
reached. 

(6) Magnitude. 

The immense magnitude of some of the stars 
is well nigh bewildering. From some points of 
view the earth may be said to be large, but 
Jupiter is a thousand and four hundred times 
larger, and yet the earth and Jupiter are both 
insignificant when compared with some of the 
so-called fixed stars. 

The bright star Capella is about eighteen 
times larger than the sun and one hundred and 
twenty-eight times brighter. If, therefore, its 
heat is proportionately greater than that of the 
sun, it is quite past human comprehension. 

And this also may be said that, judging from 



Other Suns 137 

conditions existing in our planetary system, a 
similar system belonging to Capella, if there is 
such, would be threatened with disaster, which 
is no less true of systems belonging to any of the 
other larger and brighter stars. 

That is, a planet receiving the same amount 
of light and heat as the sun gives to the earth 
would have to be more than twelve thousand 
million miles from Capella, while a planet holding 
the same relation to Capella that Neptune does 
to our sun, as to light and heat, would have to 
be not far from four hundred thousand million 
miles distant, which seemingly would entangle 
it with other systems during its revolutions. 

Sirius, " king of the stars," so named because 
it appears the largest and brightest, having an 
intrinsic brilliancy sixty-three and one-half 
times greater than that of our sun, is thirty-six 
million miles in circumference. The star Vega 
is fifty thousand times larger than our sun, 
which is one million four hundred thousand 
times larger than the earth. The nebula con- 
nected with the Pleiades is one hundred thou- 
sand times greater than our entire solar system. 



138 Stars Not Inhabited 

(c) Distances. 

The distances, too, of the remoter planets and 
fixed stars are almost appalling. Saturn is nine 
hundred million miles from the earth. Neptune 
is distant three thousand million miles. The 
nearest fixed star, Theta or perhaps Alpha 
Centauri, is more than twenty millions of mil- 
lions of miles distant. 15 And, according to 
what are supposed to be the most accurate 
calculations, Arcturus is one hundred and fifty- 
four billion miles from the earth. 

Messel's famous observations and calculations 
of the star " 61 Cygni" (1838) show that its 
distance from the earth is not fewer than thirty- 
seven thousand million miles, and the unresolved 
nebulae are supposed to be distant at least one 
hundred and sixty-eight thousand million miles. 

Herbert's couplet is the outcry of every 

thoughtful soul : 

" O rack me not to such extent, 
These distances belong to Thee." 1B 

(3) The Universe and " The Two-Legged 
Midget " 
It is not surprising as one contemplates these 



Other Suns 139 

measureless distances, filled with countless 
millions of stars, in comparison with many of 
which the earth is only a tiny speck, that it 
seems to be of no account in a wilderness of 
worlds, and that the theory that it is the only 
abode of organized physical intelligences has 
seemed to many minds the most idiotic of 
absurdities. 

And at first thought the very early philoso- 
phers, and especially the later thinkers such as 
Sir David Brewster, Dr. Chalmers, Sir Richard 
Owen, Professor Lardner, the two Herschels, and 
later still, Schiaparelli, Professors Newcomb and 
Lowell, certainly appear to have the right of 
way. 

Nor is it surprising that men have imagined 
that upon some of the immense and distant 
stars and star systems there are beings who in 
physical perfection and intellectual preeminence 
far transcend the most famous of those who 
have walked and ruled the earth. 

Nor is it surprising that the comparatively 
insignificant creature called man, whose height 
usually falls short of six feet, and whose 



140 Stars Not Inhabited 

weight, as a rule, is fewer than a hundred and 
fifty pounds, the majority of the race dying in 
infancy and youth, should be looked upon as 
" a two-legged midget.' ' 

And, perhaps, nearly in proportion as one 
magnifies the physical universe one is in danger 
of minimizing humanity, and in case of the 
materialist the passion seems to be to dignify, 
almost deify, the stars and other material things, 
and degrade humanity to the lowest possible 
level. It has become quite fashionable to class 
men with mosquitoes and microbes. It has 
also been suggested that man is comparatively 
of so little consequence that he should sit 
still lest he disturb a fly, and that he should 
not eat lest he bite off the head of a brother 
microbe. 

And the trouble with even a fair-minded 
astronomer is that his vision becomes so filled 
with Mars, Jupiter, and the countless millions 
of celestial worlds that he can scarcely see 
himself or his fellow man. 

But if one were less of an astronomer and 
more of a philosopher and psychologist, the 



Other Suns 141 

discovery would be made that the majestic 
things in the universe are not at the large end 
of the telescope, where the planets and stars are, 
but at the small end, where the eye and brain, 
the intelligence and imagination of man, are 
playing their part. And just in proportion as 
one succeeds in fathoming the mind of man, 
which no plummet has yet been able to sound, 
will one begin to realize that the mighty cosmos 
with its magnificent mileage and tonnage of 
worlds does not begin to be as large as the 
human race, and pales into insignificance in 
comparison with what goes on within the walls 
of a human skull resting on the shoulders of 
any one member of that race. 

It is, as Professor Lowell puts the case, 
" At first standing primus, inter pares, man has 
developed into first, with the rest nowhere.' ' 

(4) Weight of Opinion 

Lest it should be thought that those who 
favor the views presented in these pages are few 
in number and unimportant in ability and 
standing, quotations may be made from a few 



142 Stars Not Inhabited 

of those who take issue with the advocates of 
a plurality of inhabited worlds. 

The opinion of such a candid scientist as 
Professor Tyndall ought to have weight with 
thoughtful people. Late in life, and while 
calling in question various speculations indulged 
in by some of the astronomers of his day, Pro- 
fessor Tyndall made this statement, which no 
unprejudiced scientist will deny, " The theory 
that the fixed stars have planets is pure con- 
jee ture." 

Sir Robert Stawell Ball, fellow of the 
Royal Society of London, in a book entitled 
"The Story of the Heavens " (1885), after 
studying carefully the star spaces, reaches this 
conclusion, " It does not seem probable that 
man could live for an hour on any body in this 
universe except on this earth." 

In a book entitled " Social Philosophy" (1903) 
Dr. Lester F. Ward, a thinker and scientific 
writer of right good standing among scholars, 
makes it clear that he is at no great remove 
from accepting the opinions that seem at the 
present time to be gaining ground : 



Other Suns 143 

" So far as can be judged from what we know of 
the essential conditions of life, the earth, to say the 
least, is highly favored among the planets of our 
system, and it may well be that this is the only one 
out of them all on which the conditions to a high 
development exist. 

" The sun is known to be in a state of such intense 
heat that some of the metals which require great 
heat to melt are not only melted, but volatilized. 
No one, therefore, conceives that there can be any 
life or intelligence on the sun. But our sun is only 
one of the lesser fixed stars, and it may be assumed 
that similar conditions prevail throughout the uni- 
verse.' ' 

Professor Proctor, already mentioned, who 
at one time was an earnest advocate of a plu- 
rality of inhabited worlds, a few years later 
changed his views entirely. The reasoning that 
led to this change may be of interest : 

" When I wrote ' Other Worlds than Ours' (1885), 
I set out with the idea of maintaining what was then 
generally believed, — the theory that all the eight 
known planets of the solar system are inhabited 
worlds. 

" I proposed to show that the conditions under 
which life exists in Jupiter, Saturn, and Mars, on the 
one hand, or in Venus and Mercury on the other, are 
unlike those we recognize on the earth, but not, 
therefore, inconsistent with the possibility of life. 



144 Stars Not Inhabited 

Whewell had striven to show that Jupiter is a watery 
planet, cold and dismal, with none but gelatinous 
creatures floating in its vast domains of water if any 
life exists there at all. I proposed to show that 
Jupiter is more probably warm than cold, and not a 
globe of water alone, but constituted of the same 
materials as our own earth. I had already in my 
treatise on Saturn considered the possibilities of life 
on the ringed planet without recognizing any diffi- 
culties inconsistent with vital requirements, though I 
had been struck by the enormous duration of the 
spells of darkness caused by the swaying movement 
of his rings. 

" In the case of Mars, I felt confident of success 
because all the objections which Whewell had urged 
against the existence of life on Mars had been recently 
met and overthrown. 

" With Venus the case was somewhat different. 
The decisive evidence showing that Venus has an 
atmosphere like our own, which is occasionally laden 
heavily with the vapor of water, had not been obtained 
when I wrote my ' Other Worlds/ Still, I was able 
to reason from what had been proved in the case of 
Mars to what still remained unproved in the case of 
Venus or Mercury. These orbs, though their greater 
proximity to the sun must necessarily modify the 
conditions of life, I regarded then as probably in- 
habited worlds. But even as I wrote that work I 
found my views changing. So soon as I began to 
reason out the conditions of life in Jupiter and 
Saturn, so soon as I began to apply the new knowledge 
which would, I thought, establish the theory that life 
may exist in those worlds, I found the ground 



Other Suns ' 145 

crumbling beneath my feet. The new evidence, in 
particular, when properly examined, was found to 
oppose fatally, instead of supporting, the theory I 
had hoped to establish." 

That it is difficult and somewhat unusual for 
a scientific man, with such graceful confessions 
and concessions, to turn his back upon theories 
once advocated is well known. But such a course 
clearly establishes the strength of Professor 
Proctor's subsequent firm conviction that no 
planet except the earth is the abode of any 
form of organized life. 

In a recent publication, entitled " Mars' 
Place in the Universe " (1908), the eminent 
scientist, Dr. Alfred Russel Wallace, after 
having given a lifetime to the contemplation of 
these subjects, adopts and defends the following 
conclusions which he says " have enormous 
probabilities in their favor." 

" First, that no other planet in the solar system 
than our earth is inhabited or inhabitable. Second, 
that the probabilities are almost as great against any 
other sun possessing inhabited planets. Third, that 
the solar system is situated in the plane of the Milky 
Way, not far removed from the center of that plane, 
and that the earth is, therefore, nearly in the center 



146 Stars Not Inhabited 

of the stellar universe. Fourth, that the nearly cen- 
tral position of our sun is probably a permanent one 
and has been especially favorable, perhaps abso- 
lutely essential, to life-development on the earth.' ' 

In an article in the Fortnightly Review, Lon- 
don, March, 1903, Dr. Wallace, in support of 
the claim that the inhabitants of the earth are 
the only intelligent living physically organized 
beings in existence, and that the creation of the 
universe has culminated in man's appearance, 
which was its end and aim, writes thus : 

" The result so far reached by astronomers as the 
direct, logical conclusion from the whole mass of 
facts accumulated by means of powerful instruments 
of research, which have given us the new astronomy, 
is that our sun is one of the central orbs of a globular 
star cluster, and that this star cluster occupies nearly 
the central position in the exact plane of the Milky 
Way ; but I am not aware that any writer has taken 
the next step and, combining these two conclusions, 
has stated definitely that our sun is thus shown to 
occupy a position very near if not actually at the 
center of the whole visible universe, and, therefore, 
in all probability in the center of the whole material 
universe. 

" This conclusion, no doubt, is a startling one, and 
all kinds of objections will be made against it, yet I 
am not acquainted with any great inductive result of 
modern science that has been arrived at so gradually, 



Other Suns 147 

so legitimately, by means of so vast a mass of precise 
measurements and observations, and by such wholly 
unprejudiced workers. It may not be proved with 
minute accuracy as regards the actual mathematical 
center. That is not of the least importance; but 
that it is substantially correct there seems to be no 
good reason to doubt, and I therefore hold it right 
and proper to have it so stated and provisionally 
accepted until further accumulations of evidence may 
show to what extent it requires modification." 

From Dr. Wallace's point of view, therefore, 

the planets are not only now uninhabited, but 

never have been and never will be inhabitable. 

This is in pronounced opposition to opinions 

that have been quite generally held and that 

are w r ell expressed by the following statements 

of Flammarion: 

" Life is universal and eternal, for time is one of 
its factors. Yesterday the moon, to-day the earth, 
to-morrow Jupiter. In space there are both cradles 
and tombs. Some planets are now too hot, others 
are too cold; some lack water, others have a surfeit 
of it. Some worlds may have the stage of life behind 
them; others may be growing toward it. Just at 
this particular moment in cosmic history the earth 
happens to be the only inhabited planet, but there 
was a time when other bodies were peopled, and 
there will be a time when worlds now young will 
have become mature enough for life." 



148 Stars Not Inhabited 

Dr. Wallace's reply to those who entertain 
these views is in substance this: that the un- 
favorable conditions now prevailing on Mer- 
cury, Venus, and Mars are likely to become 
worse rather than better; that the sun cannot 
last long enough to vitalize the germs claimed 
to be awaiting development in Jupiter and the 
planets beyond; that " the whole of the avail- 
able past life period of the sun has been utilized 
for life development on the earth," and that 
" the future will not be much more than may 
be needed for the completion of the grand 
drama of human history, and the development 
of the full possibilities of the mental and moral 
nature of man." 

Dr. Wallace also argues that the cosmic 
arrangements as to the earth, such as the regu- 
larity of the heat supply, always kept within 
certain limitations; the amount of solar light 
and heat ; the alternations of day and night ; the 
abundant and widely distributed water sup- 
ply; the existence of an atmosphere consisting 
of gases essential to vegetable and animal life, 
and of sufficient density to afford comfort to liv- 



Other Suns 149 

ing things, could not in one of a thousand million 
chances occur without an intelligent designer. 

The reasoning of Prof. E. C. Pickering 
closely follows that of Dr. Wallace and shows a 
tendency among the more serious-minded men 
of science towards the recognition of the theo- 
logical conception of the universe. After speak- 
ing of the distribution of the stars in the universe 
as one of the greatest problems in astronomy, 
Professor Pickering continues thus : 

" No one can look at the heavens and see such 
clusters as the Pleiades, Hyades, and Coma Berenices 
without being convinced that the distribution is not 
due to chance." 

To the materialistic objection " that man as 
a culminating point of the vastness of the uni- 
verse is a ridiculous anticlimax, the means 
being out of all proportion to the end achieved," 
is answered by Dr. Wallace on this ground, 
that when we are dealing with infinite space 
and infinite time, proportions cease to exist, and 
that if the end is worthy, it is to be presumed 
that the means used to attain it were the best 
and possibly the only ones that could be used. 



150 Stars Not Inhabited 

Such, in brief, are the opinions of Dr. Wallace, 
who has been called " the dean of English 
scientists." 

His views, as would be expected, have been 
made light of by a few materialists, but an 
intelligent and scientific rebuttal has not yet 
been offered; and until this is done, the hy- 
pothesis he has presented stands at least as 
strongly supported as any of the speculations 
that belittle mankind and rule God out of the 
universe. 17 

Another scientist who, with Lord Kelvin and 
Sir Oliver Lodge, is outranked by no scien- 
tist in Great Britain, and who in his special 
field, that of biology, is outranked by no 
scientist on earth, the late Lionel S. Beale, 
stated, a short time before his death, in an 
address before the Victoria Institute (London) 
(June 2, 1903), his convictions as to this subject 
in these words : 

" Can any satisfactory evidence be appealed to in 
support of the supposed existence of a living organism, 
or a living particle of any kind, at this time in any 
other world than this? Can the advocates of such 
purely conjectural ideas support the contention of the 



Other Suns 151 

existence of any living being of a sidereal nature in 
any part of the cosmos? Is it not certain that up to 
this time the only living beings of which we have or 
can have cognizance and knowledge are those organ- 
isms which, like man himself, have been created in 
and inhabit this world? Could any ordinary living 
thing known to us retain its life for a moment under 
the conditions now known to exist in any nebula, 
star, sun, or other like celestial body yet discovered? 

" No thinker who has studied the facts of life and 
growth in any one living thing, or the process of tissue 
formation in the animal or vegetable world, will 
admit the dogma that the physical universe, as a 
whole, is adapted to any kind or state of life. 

! ' There is no evidence that these vast aggregates 
of lifeless material atoms have ever been for a moment 
through the ages the seat of one spark of life, or of 
the movement of one single living particle. 

11 Can we suppose that any living thing known to 
us here could approach within thousands of miles of 
the nearest of them? Has not the successful investi- 
gation of the external part of many proved the pres- 
ence of some of the most refractory substances known, 
being in a state of vapor, at a temperature which we 
of this world are unable to realize? Must not many, 
if not all, of these colossal collections of inorganic 
matter be destitute of water, in which case nothing 
which can in any way compare with one single form 
of life known to us could possibly exist?" 

These words of Professor Beale, as to what 
appear to be the appalling conditions existing 



152 Stars Not Inhabited 

on some of the heavenly bodies, find abundant 
confirmation in what already has been shown 
as to some of the larger and brighter stars. 
(See p. 134.) 

After calling attention to the negative 
answer of Dr. Wallace to the question," Are 
there men in other worlds?" and to Professor 
Newcomb's opinion that there may be some 
stars " which afford their accompanying planets 
conditions sufficiently like those of our earth to 
enable human-like beings to flourish on them," 
Dr. Louis Robinson, in the article already re- 
ferred to, follows quite closely the reasoning of 
Dr. Wallace and Professor Beale in the following 
statements : 

" In the present article I propose to debate the 
matter rather from the point of view of the biologist 
than from that of the physicist or the astronomer, 
and shall endeavor to show that, judged from what 
we find in man, he is literally of the earth, earthy. 
An examination into his past history proves that he 
is adapted, with the most minute precision, to his 
own proper sphere, and that in all his parts, mental 
and bodily, he is as much a product of the complex 
conditions of life on this planet as the features of a 
bronze image are a product of its mold. It will be 
seen that, looking at the question from this stand- 



Other Suns 153 

point, even if we grant all Professor Newcomb's 
millions of planetary systems, the probabilities are 
overwhelming against the existence of men and 
women in any other world.' ' 

Now, if it be said that some of the positions 
taken by Dr. Wallace, Professor Beale, Dr. 
Robinson, and others admit neither of proof nor 
disproof, still their strong convictions cannot 
fail in arresting the attention of thoughtful 
people, especially when no scientific evidence 
whatever can be adduced that is antagonistic 
to their views. 18 

(5) Trend of Discovery Points to the 

Solitariness of Mankind in 

the Universe 

Without citing other authorities, and without 
going more into detail, it must be apparent 
from what has been shown that every year 
during the past quarter of a century the advo- 
cates of a plurality of inhabited worlds have 
found, in the curious and remarkable results of 
scientific investigation, less and less encourage- 
ment for their theory. 

Possibly not fewer than nineteen twentieths 



154 Stars Not Inhabited 

of the beautiful bodies that are seen in the 
heavens are now transferred, with scarcely a 
dissenting voice, from the positive to the nega- 
tive side of this question, and obviously the 
argument from analogy would place the remain- 
ing one twentieth with the nineteen twentieths, 
leaving the earth the solitary abode of physi- 
cally organized living beings. 

In a word, the scientific world as never before 
is confronted with the startling probability that 
man is a stranger everywhere in the physical 
universe except on the earth, and that outside 
the earth and everywhere beyond he has no 
competitor. 

That man, or anything like him, can have no 
possible existence on the sun, or on any of the 
planets or satellites of our solar system, or on 
any of the visible fixed stars, or on any of the 
possible planets or satellites of the variable 
stars, or on those of the double or multiple 
stars, appears to be the scientific conclusion. 
He could no more live on any of these last- 
mentioned stars, or on the planetary systems 
belonging to them, than he could live in flashes 



Other Suns 155 

of dynamite or gunpowder. And if man, con- 
stituted of a material body, mind, and spirit, is 
alone in the physical universe, is it any wonder 
that God's solicitude for a human being is like 
that of a father for his only child ? 



Part II 

Philosophical and Theological 
Points of View 



I. ANCIENT BELIEFS 
i. Astronomy an Ancient Science 

So far as one can judge, a study of the stars 
is as old as the human race. Astronomy was a 
science in the time of Moses. It was a science 
among the Chaldeans, Chinese, and Egyptians 
two thousand years before Christ. 

" The golden age of Chinese astronomy " 
began 2980 b.c. But Chinese scholars claim 
that, in the archives of their nation, records, 
thought by modern investigators to be authen- 
tic, are found that go back centuries earlier, 
extending through a period of nearly four 
thousand years. 

As early as 2608 B.C., during the reign of 
Hoang Ti, a scientific tribunal was organized 
for the promotion of astronomical studies. 
And so strict was the government that those in 
charge suffered a death penalty when guilty of 
inaccuracy. It is related that two noted as- 
tronomers, Ho and Ti, were summarily executed 

l S9 



160 Stars Not Inhabited 

because they failed to predict an eclipse that 
occurred during the reign of Tchaong Kaang. 19 

And what seems remarkable is that as early 
as noo b.c. Chinese astronomers made calcula- 
tions that are found to differ from those of La- 
place on the same matters by only one second. 

Among the temple ruins of upper Egypt, 
which were old with age before the pyramids 
were built, unmistakable evidence has been 
found that they were constructed for the pur- 
pose of observing through narrow apertures the 
movements, especially the rising and setting, of 
the different heavenly bodies. These are the 
most primitive chronometers and telescopes 
known in history. 

It is also an interesting fact that the names of 
the star constellations date back very early, even 
to what have been called prehistoric times. In a 
poem of Aratus, " Diosemeia " (270 B.C.), the 
names of the constellations mentioned are sub- 
stantially the same as those now employed. 
Forty-eight of the names now in use were given 
before the days of Homer and Hesiod. And the 
author of the book of Job, between three and 



Belief in Other Inhabited Worlds Ancient 161 

four thousand years ago, mentioned some of the 
famous constellations that bear the same names 
now, they did then. 

2. Astrology an Ancient Science 

Some of the most famous scientists and phil- 
osophers of antiquity not only taught that the 
stars are inhabited, but that they have great, 
if not a controlling, influence upon the individual 
and national life of a people. 

Egypt has been called " the home of astrol- 
ogy,' ' and its sway in that country was imperial, 
nor was it scarcely less so in Babylonia, Chal- 
dea, ancient Persia, and later in every part of 
Europe. 

3. Belief in Other Inhabited Worlds Ancient 

The opinion, too, that the stars are inhabited 
by intelligent beings is not of late origin. 

Anaxagoras, 499 b.c, taught that the moon 
is " another earth,' ' and that there are living 
beings upon it. 

Plato, about 380 b.c, in his " Timaeus," ex- 
pressed the opinion that each soul at its creation 



1 62 Stars Not Inhabited 

has a star assigned to it, and if the man has 
lived well while on earth his soul will go to that 
star after death. 

Richard Hinckley Allen, in his book, " Star- 
Names and Their Meaning/ ' after quoting from 
Wordsworth : 

" The stars are mansions built by Nature's hand, 
And haply, there the spirits of the blest 
Dwell clothed in radiance, their immortal vest, ,, 

adds this statement: " Indeed, this thought 
[habitations on the stars] has been current in 
all history, in civilized as in savage life, on every 
continent, and in the isles of the sea." 

4. Unique Attitude of Bible Writers 

The reason for the statement of the foregoing 
facts is now apparent. That is, there can be no 
doubt that the early Bible writers were familiar 
with every phase of ancient astronomical and 
astrological science. But the singular fact is 
that, though the people of Israel often adopted 
the theories and practices of surrounding nations 
(Is. 47 : 15), the writers of their Bible preserved 
a uniform silence both as to the inhabitants of 



Questions Involved 163 

the stars and as to the influences of the stars 
upon human destiny. They speak of heaven, of 
hades, of sheol and of hell, but never of the 
stars as places of abode for either the good or 

bad. 

5. Questions Involved 

One may, therefore, well ask what at the 
present time would be the criticism of the skep- 
tic had any Bible writer been found on these 
subjects to be in essential agreement with con- 
temporary thinkers and writers. 

The compiler and editor of the Pentateuch 

wrote thus against the sin of idolatry: 

" Take ye . therefore good heed unto yourselves 
. . . lest thou lift up thine eyes unto heaven, and 
when thou seest the sun and the moon and the 
stars, even all the host of heaven, thou be drawn 
away and worship them, and serve them. For the 
Lord thy God is a consuming fire, a jealous God. 
(Deut. 4 : i5> *9> 24.) 

But suppose, instead of writing this admoni- 
tion, he had fallen into the ways and views of 
his day and had employed words like these: 
The stars are vast worlds and dwelling places 
of beings more worthy than yourselves; they 



164 Stars Not Inhabited 

influence your destiny, and are, therefore, 
worthy objects of worship? 

Or what, if the writer of the Book of Job, 
when speaking of God as the maker of Arcturus, 
Orion, and the Pleiades (Job 9 : 9) had said : 
These stars are the abode of intelligences like 
those who have their dwelling places on the 
earth ? 

Or what if this same writer, when describing 
the ignorance and imbecility of mankind, and 
when representing God as asking man these 
questions: " Canst thou bind the cluster of the 
Pleiades, or loose the bands of Orion? Canst 
thou lead forth the Mazzaroth [or the signs of 
the zodiac] in their season ? Or canst thou guide 
the Bear with her [heavenly] train? (Job 38: 
31, 32, Revised Version) had added these words: 
There are dwellers on Arcturus, Orion, Pleiades, 
Mazzaroth, and the Bear who are as much supe- 
rior to you as you are to the cattle on the hill- 
side? 

Or what if Amos, who speaks of Orion and 
the seven stars (the Pleiades) , or any other one 
of the Jehovah prophets, had adopted the views 



Questions Involved 165 

then prevailing, or even those of subsequent 
generations, declaring that man is only one of 
a mighty family of kindred that inhabit the 
beautiful stars in infinite space? 

And what if Peter, when speaking of the day 
of the Lord " in the which the heavens shall pass 
away with a great noise, and the elements shall 
melt with fervent heat, the earth also and the 
works that are therein shall be burned up " (2 
Peter 3:10), had followed the announcement 
with such words as these: We, amid these 
scenes of destruction and desolation, are to be 
translated to the beautiful stars, where forever 
shall be the home of God's children? 

Or what if Paul, w T hen writing to the Corin- 
thians and telling them that ' ' one star diff ereth 
from another star in glory " (1 Cor. 15 : 41) had 
said, But whatever their glory or magnificence, 
they are to be our dwelling places, and on some 
of the larger and more beautiful ones are " the 
many mansions " of which the Lord has told 
us? 

Or suppose Christ when saying, ' ' Other sheep 
I have, which are not of this fold " (John 10:16), 



1 66 Stars Not Inhabited 

had also said, These other sheep have their 
abode on the stars that fill the heavens, and I 
am their protector and shepherd there, as I am 
yours here? 

What an opportunity there was for some, even 
all of these writers, to have fallen into the drift 
of opinion prevalent in their day. And had they 
done so they would have been most highly com- 
mended, century after century, by scientists 
and theologians the world over. Brewster, 
Lardner, Chalmers, and scores of others would 
have discoursed on these revelations as incon- 
testable evidence of the credibility and inspira- 
tiorf of the Bible. 

But, on the other hand, what dismay such 
announcements would bring at the present 
time to those who are trying on rational grounds 
to establish the integrity of the Bible as the 
inspired word of God! 

Fortunate is it, therefore, for Bible theology, 
especially in view of recent astronomical dis- 
coveries, that no word was recorded in the 
sacred scriptures that gives support to the 
assumption of a plurality of inhabited worlds, 



Questions Involved 167 

or that teaches that the stars in any way control 
the action and destiny of men and nations. 

And it is interesting to note that in all the 
work done by destructive critics there is to be 
found no explanation of this remarkable silence 
of the Bible writers on these once popular and, 
as was thought, well-intrenched assumptions 
and speculations of scientists and philosophers 
that are now almost altogether abandoned. 20 



II. STARS CREATED FOR MANKIND; INTELLEC- 
TUAL STIMULUS 

i. Popular Objections and Difficulties 

Materialists, being unable or unwilling to 
accept the scriptural conception of humanity, 
or the divine purpose in the creation of the 
physical universe, especially when thinking of 
its overwhelming vastness and of the littleness 
of man, have no hesitation in casting ridicule, 
as would be expected, upon the Bible for its 
teachings as to the comparative greatness and 
importance of human beings. 

And also Christian believers, when looking 
at the stars and thinking of the seemingly 
infinite ocean of worlds, often have been quite 
staggered with the thought that all these things 
were created in any considerable measure for 
the purpose of giving to man, whether in the 
observatory or on the hillside, entertainment 
and service. 

1 68 



Popular Objections and Difficulties 169 

And thus the skeptic with a sneer, and the 
believer with surprise and wonder, have asked 
in common the same questions: Can it be 
possible that the stars and star systems, in all 
their majesty and mightiness, were created, not 
to say exclusively, but in any considerable 
measure, for the purpose of regulating for man 
the earth's motions, or to aid him in his perilous 
navigations, or even for the purpose of calling 
forth his admiration and worship? And why 
should God have created, even for such pur- 
poses, so many distant and even invisible suns 
and worlds? Would not a far smaller number 
and less distant stars have done as well or far 
better? 

These questions are certainly not unreason- 
able, at least on first thought, and yet, as 
every one knows, superabundance in creation 
is a law almost more pronounced than any 
other. A million more seed fall from a forest 
of maples every year than grow into trees, 
and hundreds of millions more spawn are cast 
than mature into fish. 

Nor should it be forgotten that it is no 



1 70 Stars Not Inhabited 

difficult task for an infinite God to create 
worlds, more or fewer, larger or . smaller, 
nearer or more remote. Infinite power is an 
adequate answer to ten thousand questions 
that one may ask. And this manifestation of 
infinite and awe-inspiring power in creation 
may be one of the lessons God would teach 
humanity in his system of materialistic theology 
as he has taught it in Bible theology. (Rom. 
1 : 20.) 

And, besides, it may turn out that the uni- 
verse of matter now made into star- jewelry for 
the purpose of challenging the investigation 
and inspiring the worship of mankind may 
also have another purpose as well — that of 
being held in readiness to be transmuted and 
transformed in the twinkling of an eye into 
spiritualized worlds and kingdoms that are to 
last forever. What is more familiar in science 
than the transmutation of matter ? Under con- 
ditions that scientists can easily suggest, 
though at present beyond their command, char- 
coal may become diamonds and clay be changed 
to rubies. (Is. 34 : 4 ; Rom. 8:21; 1 Cor. 15 : 



Bible Revelations 171 

46, 51-54 ; 2 Cor. 4 : 18, 5:1; Heb. 12 : 27; 
2 Peter 3 : 10, 12 ; Rev. 21:1, 10, 11.) 

2. Scientific Opinion Favorable to Bible 
Revelations 

But the reader may wish to know if our 
leading scientists have discovered any such 
intent in the universe as conservative theolo- 
gians have supposed. 

It may be too early to expect as yet many 
concessions. The silence, however, already has 
been broken. 

Prof. J. G. Porter, director of the Cincinnati 
Observatory, speaking of the effect upon the 
human mind produced by a study of the won- 
ders of the Milky Way, employed recently these 
words : 

" That circle of light which science tells us is com- 
posed of worlds heaped on worlds, suns towering 
beyond suns, in limitless profusion, startles the imagi- 
nation and awes the soul.' ' 

The late Professor Newcomb, in an address at 
the dedication of the Flower Observatory, Uni- 
versity of Pennsylvania, May, 1897, gives his im- 
pressions while contemplating stellar distances : 



172 Stars Not Inhabited 

" I have seldom felt a more delicious sense of re- 
pose than when, crossing the ocean during the sum- 
mer months, I sought a place where I could lie alone 
on the deck, look up at the constellations, with Lyra 
near the zenith, and, while listening to the clank of 
the engine, try to calculate the hundreds of millions 
of years which would be required by our ship to 
reach the star (a) Lyrae if she could continue her 
course in that direction without ever stopping. It is 
a striking example of how easily we may fail to realize 
our knowledge when I say that I have thought many 
a time how deliciously one might pass those hundred 
millions of years in a journey to that star, without 
its occurring to me that we are actually making that 
very journey at a speed compared with which the 
motion of a steamship is slow indeed. Through 
every year, every month, every minute of human 
history, from the first appearance of man on the 
earth, from the era of the builders of the Pyramids, 
through the times of Caesar and Hannibal, through 
the period of every event that history records, not 
merely our earth, but the sun and the whole solar 
system with it, have been speeding their way toward 
the star of which I speak on a journey of which we 
know neither the beginning nor the end. We are' at 
this moment thousands of miles nearer to (a) Lyrae 
than we were a few minutes ago when I began this 
discourse, and through every future moment, for 
untold thousands of years to come, the earth and all 
there is on it will be nearer (a) Lyrae, or nearer to the 
place where that star now is, by hundreds of miles 
for every minute of time come and gone. When 
shall we get there? Probably in less than a million 



Bible Revelations 173 

years, perhaps in half a million. We cannot tell 
exactly, but get there we must if the laws of nature 
and the laws of motion continue as they are. To 
attain to the stars was the seemingly vain wish of an 
ancient philosopher, but the whole human race is, in 
a certain sense, realizing this wish as rapidly as a 
speed of ten miles a second can bring it about." 

It is somewhat surprising, with this apprecia- 
tion of the effect of stellar distances upon his 
own thought, that the professor did not also 
have the impression that (a) Lyrae, without a 
group of inhabited planets, was accomplishing 
its ordained purpose. 

The late Dr. John Fiske seems to have found, 
not long before his death, the clew that leads to 
a solution of the mystery of the universe. In 
his book entitled " The Destiny of Man " (1884), 
speaking of the shock that came to the con- 
temporaries of Copernicus when it was an- 
nounced that the earth is not the center of the 
universe and, therefore, not the sole object of 
God's creative forethought, and when the 
skeptical world insisted that Copernicus had 
made the Christian religion untenable by 
discrediting the Bible estimate of man in com- 



174 Stars Not Inhabited 

parison with the greatness of the material 
universe, the doctor continues thus : . 

" But all these matters are now outgrown. The 
speculative necessity for man's occupying the largest 
and most central spot in the universe is no longer felt 
and is recognized as a primitive and childish notion. 
With our larger knowledge we see that these vast 
and fiery suns are, after all, but the Titan-like serv- 
ants of the little planets that they bear with them in 
their flight through the abysses of space. Out from 
the awful gaseous turmoil of the central mass dart 
those ceaseless waves of gentle radiance that, when 
caught upon the surface of whirling worlds like ours, 
bring forth the varied forms . . . that make up 
what we can see of life. And as, when God revealed 
himself to his ancient prophet, he came not in the 
earthquake or the tempest but in a voice that was 
1 still ' and ' small,' so that divine spark, the human 
soul, as it takes up its brief abode in this realm of 
fleeting phenomena, chooses not the central sun, 
where elemental forces forever blaze and clash, but 
selects an outlying terrestrial nook where seeds may 
germinate and where the forms of organic life may 
come to take shape and thrive." 

While these words of Dr. Fiske do not express 
all that the facts warrant, yet they indicate a 
return to the Bible conception of the universe 
and are a great advance upon opinions held by 
literary and scientific men century after century. 



Bible Revelations 175 

And Professor Tyndall, in a magazine article 
published not long since, grasped this same 
thought, giving expression to it in these words : 

11 It would appear as if one of the ends of the 
Creator in setting these shining things [the stars] in 
heaven was to woo the attention and excite the 
intellectual activity of his earth-born child." 

In reading these utterances of men who are 
certainly not special pleaders for an inspired 
revelation, the words of the Bible come back 
with a wealth of new meaning and may be 
repeated by the orthodox believer without 
hesitation or embarrassment : 

" And God said, Let there be lights in the firma- 
ment of the heaven to divide the day from the 
night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and 
for days and years. . . . And God set them in the 
expanse of the heaven to give light upon the earth, 
and to rule over the day and over the night, and to 
divide the light from the darkness." (Gen. 1: 14, 17, 18.) 

"For all things are yours; whether Paul, or 
Apollos, or Cephas, or the world, or life, or death, or 
things present, or things to come; all are yours." 
(1 Cor. 3 : 22.) 21 

And the " all things " include the sun, moon, 
and stars, if this passage is to be interpreted in 



176 Stars Not Inhabited 

the light of the uniform teachings of the 
Bible. 

And if the words of our distinguished scien- 
tists just quoted, and those of Moses and Paul 
are followed out logically, the conclusion 
reached, in each instance, would be the same, 
and is this: The whole physical universe is 
made to serve humanity and bows in adoration 
in the presence of one of those little ones whom 
Christ took in his arms and blessed. 

Jupiter and all the other planets, Orion and 
all the other constellations in the heavens, are 
to pass away; the child has an existence that 
is endless, and capabilities for development 
next to boundless ; a development, if the com- 
parison may be allowed, that reaches beyond 
the range of all star systems, and beyond any 
star in the universe, however remote it may be. 

" How I wonder what you are," 
is the child's salutation when looking into the 
sky, but no star, near or distant, small or large, 
ever wondered at itself or at any other star. 
The child even now outdoes, outranks, and is 
king over all the stars in the universe. 



Fitness of Things 177 

3. Fitness of Things 

This also is a rational conclusion that if the 

" invisible things of him from the creation of 

the world are clearly seen, being understood by 

the things that are made, even his eternal power 

and Godhead," as Paul affirms, then there ought 

to be a star-filled universe of such magnitude 

and majesty as will awaken in the human mind 

the conception of an eternal and infinite God. 

11 Stars — the words of God, the Scriptures of the 
skies," 

seem to be trying to say to mankind, Increase 
the power of your telescope a thousandfold, 
then with it sweep the unexplored and un- 
measured distances, and when you have done 
all this you will find the One who made us, 
there before you, to welcome your coming. 

It is as if God himself were saying, I will be 
lavish in my works and wonders in man's be- 
half ; nothing short of stars enough to call forth 
his thought and investigation until time ends 
will answer the purpose; these he shall have. 

The meaning of it all is that the universe of 
stars is God's schoolhouse, and its appointments 



178 Stars Not Inhabited 

are none too large, and its appliances none too 
many or too vast, to answer the purpose when 
the possibilities wrapped up in man's mind are 
correctly and wisely estimated. 

And, since the possible development of the 
human intellect appears to have no conceivable 
limitations, why should the field of investiga- 
tion be restricted to the few planets in the solar 
system, or even to the scores and hundreds of 
star systems already numbered and mapped ? 

A mind that is next to limitless in its capa- 
bilities is entitled to textbooks and school- 
houses that teach subjects that are equally 
limitless is a rational conclusion; no other is 
rational. 



IH. STARS CREATED FOR MANKIND: ETHICAL 

AND RELIGIOUS INTENT; A CALL 

TO WORSHIP 

Thus far in the discussion attention has been 
largely confined to the economic and purely- 
intellectual service of the planetary and stellar 
universe. 

This, however, is only a part, and, from some 
points of view, the smaller part of the design 
in the works of creation. It is rather the ethical 
and religious purpose that is of chief importance. 

It is with the material universe as with the 
Holy Scriptures; history, science, and phil- 
osophy are incidentally taught, but in both, 
the supreme purpose is religious instruction. 

If the sun and moon; if Jupiter and the 
beautiful morning and evening star, Venus; if 
the other planets and the distant spaces filled 
with the fixed and variable stars, — with red, 
double, and multiple stars, — could speak, they 
would say, as with one voice, We are here 
in this vast belfry of the sky trying to call the 

179 



180 Stars Not Inhabited 

children of men away from their petty busi- 
nesses and their useless and tiresome contro- 
versies to a religious service of prayer and 
praise in this vast temple not made with hands. 
Obey and worship Him who created us, for we 
are made to inspire such worship, is the exhor- 
tation that ought to be heard in every part of 
the mighty universe of God. 

" This prospect vast, what is it? Weighed aright, 
'Tis Nature's system of divinity, 
And every student of the night inspires." 

And if the stars do not stimulate the intellect 
and lead to worship, which confessedly too often 
is the case, it is no fault of theirs nor of their 
maker, but is because the eyes of those who 
build the house, drive the loom, keep the store, 
and dig the grave are much of the time too 
heavily downcast to see them. 

And the gas and dazzling electric lights are 
now so blinding to the eyes of mortals that the 
stars are only occasionally seen and studied by 
the mass of men in civilized lands and thus is 
missed the intellectual stimulus and religious 
uplift they are designed to inspire. 



Stars Created for Mankind 181 

Had the Psalmist been whelmed in the 
strifes of modern civilized life, or had he passed 
his nights from youth to manhood in a populous 
city, or had he traveled at night in well-lighted 
Pullman cars instead of on foot, over the hills 
and through the valleys of Judea, it is certain 
his beautiful psalms, descriptive of the wonder- 
ful works of God in the starlit heavens, never 
by him would have been written. 

But there are others whose privilege it is to 
see the stars as often as they choose, but, be- 
cause of this, they become indifferent. Should 
they for a while be denied the privilege they 
might then look up and wonder. 

" If the stars," says Emerson, " should ap- 
pear only one night in a thousand years, how 
would men believe and adore and preserve for 
many generations the remembrance of the city 
of God which had been shown.' ' 

And there are others who know the stars are 
in the sky and who see them there, but are too 
atheistic or irreligious to worship the One who 
made them, and are too dull to be thrilled by 
either their beauty or majesty. This is their 



1 82 Stars Not Inhabited 

misfortune and is like that of others who for 
similar reasons fail to find in God's written 
revelation those treasures that inspire and 
otherwise help the believer. 



IV. BIBLE ESTIMATES 

The position of man in his relation to the 
universe has been a matter of more or less 
controversy. 

The skeptic has said, and correctly, that 
Bible representations clearly leave the impres- 
sion that man is of chief importance in the 
material universe ; that the writers of the Bible 
did not know what is now well known; the 
size of the planets and the immensity of the 
star systems never dawned upon them ; in their 
ignorance they did not even imagine that any 
of the heavenly bodies are inhabited or inhab- 
itable, and, therefore, wrote in harmony with 
their crude and narrow ideas, never having had 
the slightest conception of the origin, extent, 
magnificence, or purpose of the material uni- 
verse. 

Without controversy just yet as to this 
matter, it is admitted that the teaching of the 
Bible writers, as skeptics assert, is that the 
stars, stupendous as they are, in number and 

183 



184 Stars Not Inhabited 

magnitude, are as nothing in comparison with 
the greatness and majesty of man ; . that they 
are, in Bible estimate, only particles of dust on 
the ceilings of the palatial universe in which 
man is king. 

1. Image of God 

In the book of Genesis, first chapter, is the 
following revelation : 

'* And God said, Let us make man in our image, 
after our likeness [or similitude]. And God created 
man in his own image, in the image [or similitude] of 
God created he him; male and female created he 
them." (Gen. 1 : 26, 27.) 21 

From these words scarcely less can be in- 
ferred than this, that God did for man at his 
creation the utmost possible. While he could 
have made him a different being from what he 
now is, of greater physical strength, of greater 
personal beauty, having wings with which to 
fly, power to live a thousand years, and other 
endowments that can be imagined and are 
sometimes desired, yet a greater thing he could 
not do than make man in his own shadow or 
similitude, image or likeness, whatever these 



-The Commission an Exaltation. 185 

words may mean. This was the limit in the 
direction of deity so far as earthly environment 
and the divine purpose in man's creation 
would allow. 

2. The Commission an Exaltation 

After man's creation he was given, so far as 
this earth is concerned, according to Bible 
statement, the sublimest commission imagi- 
nable : "Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish 
the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion 
over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the 
air, and over every living thing that moveth 
upon the earth " (Gen. 1:28); and, as a matter 
of fact, such dominion has been the prerogative 
of man, and of no one or thing else, from the 
day of his creation till now. Indisputably, 
11 man is monarch of all he surveys," stars 
included. 

Also incidentally our Lord, in one of his con- 
troversies with the Pharisees, hints at man's 
supremacy, " And Jesus said unto them, 
The sabbath was made for man, and — not man 
for the sabbath." Had occasion called for it, 



1 86 Stars Not Inhabited 

there is every reason for supposing he also 
would have said, The earth, the ocean, the 
stars, the whole physical universe, were made 
for man, not man for them. 

And the apostle Paul, in one of those sublime 
passages that bear any amount of study, en- 
forces this same idea of man's exaltation: 
" Therefore let no man glory in men. For all 
things are yours; whether Paul, or Apollos, or 
Cephas, or the world, or life, or death, or 
things present, or things to come ; all are yours ; 
and ye are Christ's; and Christ is God's." 
(i Cor. 3 121-23.) 

And the words, " He that spared not his 
own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how 
shall he not with him also freely give us all 
things?" (Rom. 8: 32) have a significance far 
profounder than a casual reader discovers, and 
are in full keeping with the entire scheme of 
redemption that makes man, from a theological 
point of view, the object of supremest interest. 

This same apostle also speaks other words of 
strange and stupendous import. Personifying 
the entire physical universe, he represents it as 



The Commission an Exaltation 187 

watching humanity with intensest interest: 
" For the earnest expectation of the creation 
waiteth for the revealing of the sons of God." 
(Rom. 8: 19.) The meaning of which appears 
to be that the chief business of the physical 
universe, that for which it was created, is not 
only to watch, but to aid in the development of 
the human family. 

And with a depth of meaning rarely if ever 
fathomed, the apostle John, speaking of the 
love of God for man, almost in ecstacy ex- 
claimed: " Behold [a term of wonder] what 
manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon 
us, that we should be called children of God " ; 
" now are we children of God, and it is not yet 
made manifest what we shall be." (1 John 

3 • i> 2 -) 

It is, however, revealed in the following 
words that those who gain spiritual conquests 
in the present life shall have regal power in the 
kingdom of God: " To him that overcometh 
will I grant to sit with me in my throne, even as 
I also overcame, and am set down with my 
Father in his throne." (Rev. 3 : 21.) 



1 88 Stars Not Inhabited 

Elsewhere in the New Testament are passages 
scarcely less suggestive: " Know ye not that 
we shall judge angels? " " Of his own will he 
brought us forth by the word of truth, that we 
should be a kind of firstfruits [choice fruits] of 
his creatures.'' " For as many as are led by the 
Spirit of God, these are the sons of God." 
" The Spirit himself beareth witness with our 
spirit, that we are children of God: and if 
children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint- 
heirs with Christ; if so be that we suffer with 
him, that we may be also glorified with him." 
(i Cor. 6:3; James 1 : 18 ; Rom. 8 : 14, 16.) 

" Judges of angels! " " Firstfruits of his crea- 
tures!" "Sons of God!" "Heirs of God!" 
"Joint-heirs with Christ!" and having with 
Christ a common throne and a common glory, 
is the exaltation to which Bible writers lift 
humanity; nor is there among Bible revela- 
tions the slightest intimation that there are 
angels or other natural or supernatural beings 
anywhere in the universe who have in their en- 
dowments, or in the positions they hold, or in 
the possibilities before them, anything that 



Eighth Psalm 189 

need start the envy of humanity. Towering 
above all the hierarchies of angels is man's 
assignment; ministering spirits are the angels; 
man is king. 

3. Eighth Psalm 

It is possible that some one may raise the 
point that in the foregoing enumeration a very 
important passage has been omitted in which 
the Psalmist declares that man is " made a little 
lower than the angels," a statement afterwards 
quoted by one of the New Testament writers. 
(Ps. 8:5; Heb. 2 :6-8.) 

It is, however, a singular fact, as all students 
of the Bible know, that this is the only passage 
in the entire Bible on which can be built a 
theory that there are created intelligences in 
the universe that are of more importance or 
that outrank humanity; such being the case, 
this psalm ought to be brought under critical 
examination to ascertain whether there really 
is a contradiction in Bible revelation, or whether 
there is here a corruption of the original text, 
which, however, no critic has yet suggested; or 
whether the translators were incorrect in their 



190 Stars Not Inhabited 

rendering of some of the more important words 
in the Psalm, which has been the case in other 
instances. 

Before making an examination, this, in fair- 
ness, ought to be said: that the English Bible, 
called " the King James " or "Authorized " Ver- 
sion, is remarkable as a whole for the accuracy 
of its translation, and especially for the purity of 
its English. So true is this that it is doubtful if 
the recent revision, or any other, ever fully will 
take the place of the one that has been en- 
throned in the hearts and homes of all English- 
speaking people. 

That some quite misleading inaccuracies are 
found in the " Authorized Version/ ' not many, 
but a few, is what no one denies, and is what 
would be expected in view of a more critical 
study of the text, and by reason of new discov- 
eries in different departments of human knowl- 
edge. The Eighth Psalm is an illustration in 
point. The inaccuracy in this instance came 
about in no unusual way. That is, the literal 
meaning of the passage appears to have been 
quite beyond the comprehension of the Jewish 



Eighth Psalm 191 

scholars of Alexandria, who made a translation 
of the Bible into Greek, called the Septuagint. 
It seemed incredible to them that the inspired 
writer really intended to place man above 
angels and next to God ; hence their interpreta- 
tion was forced to suit their opinion, always an 
unfortunate procedure. 

The early English translators, feeling much 
the same way, accordingly followed the Septua- 
gint ; hence the incorrectness of the Authorized 
Version. 

The reading familiar to English-speaking peo- 
ple is the following : 

" When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy 
fingers, the moon and the stars, which thou hast 
ordained; what is man, that thou art mindful of him? 
and the son of man, that thou visitest him? For 
thou hast made him a little lower than the angels.' ' 

The better rendering, as no Hebrew scholar 
will question, is this: 

;< When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy 
fingers, the moon and the stars, which thou hast or- 
dained; what is man? Thou art mindful of him. 
And the son of man? Thou visitest him. For thou 
hast created him only a shaving from God." 



192 Stars Not Inhabited 

Attention is called especially to the phrase 
translated in the English Bible a " little lower,' ' 
which means to lack a shaving, that is, some- 
thing very thin or small, and to Elohini, 
wrongly translated " angels.' ' 

The word Elohim is not used in any of the 
Semitic languages except in Old Testament 
Hebrew, and now T here in the Old Testament 
does the word ever mean "angels." It means 
usually " the fullness of divine power," and 
when employed without an article, as in the 
present instance, it means " properly and 
solely He who is God alone." (Lange's Com- 
mentary.) 

Accordingly the Revised Version reads: " For 
thou hast made him but little lower than God." 

It will be noticed, too, that this change in the 

translation gives self -consistency to the entire 

Psalm, which is not the case in the Authorized 

Version. A repetition, beginning with the 

fourth verse, will make this clear: 

" What is man? Thou art mindful of him. And 
the son of man? Thou visited him, and hast created 
him only a little lower than deity, and hast crowned 
him with glory and honor, and hast put all things 



Eighth Psalm 193 

under his feet; all sheep and oxen, yea, and the beasts 
of the field, the fowl of the air, the fish of the sea, 
and whatsoever passeth through the paths of the sea. 
O Lord, our Lord, how excellent is thy name in all 
the earth/ ' 

And it will be still further noticed that this 
translation not only secures self -consistency in 
the entire Psalm, but is in harmony with several 
other passages already mentioned, and with the 
teaching of the Epistle to the Hebrews, where 
the passage is quoted, the entire trend of which 
shows that God has subjugated all things to 
man, a declaration that admits of no excep- 
tion, thus elevating him to the position where 
the Bible uniformly has placed him — far above 
all created intelligences, whose endowments and 
capabilities when fully developed will be only a 
little below those of God himself, though while 
on earth he may seem far from supreme even 
among created things, for as yet he is only in 
his infancy. 22 

;< The earth is no goal, but 
Starting place for man," 

is the poet's conception as well as a revelation 
to Paul and other Bible writers. 



194 Stars Not Inhabited 

4. Venturesomeness of Bible Writers 

Upon a moment's reflection it will appear that 
the men who wrote the Bible, in saying what 
they did as to the supremacy of humanity, 
have given the world the bravest book in all 
literature, for at the very time the earlier sci- 
entists and philosophers were discoursing on 
the magnitude and majesty of the universe and 
the controlling influence of the stars, the Bible 
writers were repeating, in one form or another, 
the thought that it was for man the material 
universe was created and the revelations of the 
Bible given; that it was for him the invisible 
heavens are now preparing and that thrones are 
left vacant until the time comes when, in his 
superb development, man shall be placed where, 
from the start, God intended he should be, with 
the Lord Christ in joint rulership over a univer- 
sal empire. 

And the Bible writers also dared say that 
,when human probation ends, when Christ shall 
appear, when the resurrection of the dead shall 
take place, when the final judgment shall be 
announced, then, amid those last scenes, the 



Venturesoineness of Bible Writers 195 

destruction of the physical universe, sun, moon, 
and stars, will follow, and follow because their 
mission will have been accomplished. 

In other words, the human race having gained 
sufficient numbers, and having received its pre- 
liminary education, will need the physical uni- 
verse no longer, and, Let it be no more, will be 
the command, or, to employ Bible language, 
" Let all the host of heaven be dissolved," and 
let " the elements melt with fervent heat," and 
from the wreckage transformed, or translated, 
let " the new heavens and the new earth " 
emerge, " wherein dwelleth righteousness. " (Is. 
34:4; 65:17; 66:22; 2 Peter 3:7, 10-13; 
Rev. 6: 14; 10:5, 6.) 

But this is not all that can be said, for the 
Bible writers more than hint that man's de- 
velopment is to be endless and next to bound- 
less, provided the trend on earth and before 
death is towards that which makes for right- 
eousness. " From glory to glory " without end ; 
" he that is holy, let him be made holy still," or 
be more and more holy (Revised Version) , are 
descriptions of an eternal progression. (2 Cor 3 : 
18; Rev. 22 : 11.) 



196 Stars Not Inhabited 

" Eternal process moving on, 
From state to state the spirit walks." 

All of which appears to mean that redeemed 
men are on the way to infinite perfection, and 
in moral rectitude are yet to be as perfect as 
the Father in heaven. (Gen. 17: 1; Lev. 19: 2; 
Matt. 5:48; Col. 1:28; Jas. 1:4; 1 Peter 1: 

is-) 

The Psalmist answered the question, " What 
is man ? " by saying " Thou are mindful of him," 
and if there were added the words, " more mind- 
ful of him than of anything else in the universe," 
the writer would not have gone beyond the 
manifest teachings of the Bible from Genesis to 
Revelation. But at this point one is confronted 
with an apparent if not a real difficulty; for, 
judging from a hasty outlook, the Bible writers, 
from some points of view, appear to have lost 
their reckoning and have drifted into a depre- 
ciation of the star universe and into a laudation 
of humanity that is amazing. For if, as materi- 
alists sometimes reason, man is only an insig- 
nificant affair, being without infinite capabilities 
and endowments, being limited in time and 



Venturesomeness of Bible Writers 197 

opportunity for developing even the powers in 
his possession, and if the ordinances of heaven 
are not established and carried on entirely in 
his interest, and if sun, moon, and stars are not 
to disappear when his probation ends — in a 
word, if man is only a secondary consideration 
in the universe, and not the primary; if he is 
not the greatest, the grandest, the most impor- 
tant of created things, the one to whom all else 
is made to contribute, then the Bible writers 
have misrepresented entirely man's relation to 
God and the universe. 

Can the difficulty presented be met satis- 
factorily to scholarly and thoughtful minds? 



V. SCIENTIFIC ESTIMATES 

i. No Organized Physical Being Greater than 

Man 

A few years since the question was raised and 
discussed among scientists whether some new 
being may not in the future be created, or 
evolved, that will outrank man as man now 
outranks the brute. 

This question from different points of view 
has been answered, but almost always in the 
negative. 

The late Prof. John Fiske and Mr. Darwin, 
representative thinkers, the one in a sort of 
literary -scientific field, the other in the field of 
pure science, never called in question the Bible 
view of the supremacy and uniqueness of 
humanity. 

Professor Fiske, in his book, " The Destiny of 

Man," already mentioned, employs these words: 

" Science now forces ns to the conclusion much 
more clearly than ever before that man is chief among 
God's creatures. The modern theory of evolution 

198 



Attainments 199 

enlarges tenfold the significance of human life, places 
man upon a loftier eminence than poets or prophets 
ever imagined, and makes him seem more than ever 
the chief object of that creative activity which is 
manifested in the physical universe/ ' 

Mr. Darwin's summary is this: " Man is the 
wonder and glory of the universe.' ' 

Professor Agassiz, from an anatomical and 
Hugh Miller with Professor Dana from geologi- 
cal points of view, reached identically the same 
conclusion, that man is the last and supremest 
object of God's creation. And scientists through- 
out the world are now answering the question, 
What is man ? by asking another equally signifi- 
cant, What is he not? 

2. Attainments 

When one takes into account what man has 
accomplished, it is not profanity to say that in 
his makeup, conduct, and accomplishments he 
is like, or at least if he chooses he may be like, 
the Elohim of Bible revelation. 

God made the great and wonderful works of 
the universe; man studies, appreciates, and 
imitates them. God thinks and plans, but so 



200 Stars Not Inhabited 

does man, and sometimes with such astonishing 
skill that the suspicion is started that the human 
mind has, by its nature, or inheritance, though 
largely undeveloped as yet, the inspiration and 
working power of the Almighty. (Job 32:8.) 

(1) In Art and Science 

What a master is man in the fine arts! His 
color making and perspective drawing put him 
in competition with what Nature even at her 
best is doing. 

He touches the quarried granite or a block of 
marble, and each becomes as perfect in form as 
the things they represent ; perfect in every way 
save in breathing and having life. 

The palaces and temples he designs and con- 
structs are of such beauty and magnificence that 
they doubtless make the angels wonder at the 
workmanship displayed. 

Nor is man less of a master in the mechanical 
arts. He invents and constructs rapid transits, 
telegraphs, and telephones, and almost seems 
able to be here and there at the same time ; not 
omnipresent precisely, but strangely near it. 



Attainments in Art and Science 201 

Nor need it any longer be a wonder that 
Abraham and the rich man conversed, though 
impassable gulfs intervened (Luke 16 : 26), for 
man has planned and wrought out inventions by 
which he is able to talk with his fellow-man 
through wide stretches of space, over sea and 
land, without so much as a wire or hair connec- 
tion between them. With his discovery of the 
Rontgen rays he is able to see through opaque 
substances, look inside closed vessels, and lay 
bare every hidden organ in the human body. 
With the surgeon's knife he can cut much of 
himself in pieces, then by nature's aid make the 
needed repairs and be greatly improved by the 
operation. 

In the electrical workshop his contrivances 
and triumphs are such that he need only touch a 
button to set miles of street railway systems in 
motion. He says, as was said in the beginning, 
" Let there be light," touches another button, 
and whole cities are lit up and night turns to 
day. He constructs his electrical searchlight 
and then makes his way along a treacherous 
coast in a dark night almost as easily as if the 



202 Stars Not Inhabited 

sun were shining. He makes excavations under 
the sea and into the hardest rocks, then unites 
a few chemicals, ignites them with a spark, and 
the earth trembles under the mighty thunder- 
ings of the explosion. 

He can fly in the air, over land and sea, 
though with imperfect machinery as yet. He 
can climb mountain peaks on iron rails, using 
fire and water and even lightning for his motive 
power. He can dive to the sea bottom, though 
as yet at a limited depth, and work there by 
the hour. In a single retort, and with one of his 
fingers, he can lift and move ten tons of boiling 
steel, empty it into molds, as easily as if it were 
a cup of water. Give him a place on which to 
stand, and materials with which to work, and he 
would be able to make all needed appliances, 
and with them play with the seething planet 
Jupiter as if it were merely a toy. He can meas- 
ure the stars as does the Creator, and can weigh 
them as in balances. He makes a spectroscope, 
lifts it to his eye, and then reports what the 
materials are that compose satellites, planets, 
and suns, visible to eye or telescope. 



Attainments in Art and Science 203 

There are times when man has more than a 
half belief that he will be able some day to 
" mount up with wings as eagles . . . run and 
not be weary . . . walk and not faint,' ' 
though the distances traveled are millions upon 
millions of miles, and the time only an hour. 
(Is. 40:31.) 

What man is doing at this very hour must 
make God proud of the child he has created, 
whose inventions likely enough are only in their 
infancy. 

Give man time and incentive and there seem 
to be no limitations to his possible achievements. 
It is the clay, and not the man that has limita- 
tions. He is yet to do greater things even than 
those wrought by the Son of God when on 
earth ; so prophesied the Christ himself. (John 
14 : 12.) 

The words of the prophet are no longer a 
wild imagination, but a most rational revela- 
tion: 

"And there appeared in the cherubims the 
form of a man's hand under their wings/ ' 
(Ezek. 10 : 8.) 



204 Stars Not Inhabited 

It would, therefore, seem as if the mighty 

angels amid the complicated celestial forces are 

yet to be supported in their flight by a human 

agency. Not over extravagant is the song of the 

poet: 

" Who built the world, made man 
With power to build and plan. 
He, the creature, may not make 
Beautiful beings all alive — 
Irised moth nor mottled snake, 
The lily's splendor, 
The light of glances infinitely tender, 
Nor the day's dying glow nor flush of morn — 
And yet his handiwork the angels shall not scorn, 
When he hath wrought in truth and by heaven's 

law — 
In lowliness and awe. 

Bravely shall he labor, while from his pure hands 
Spring fresh wonders, spread new lands; 
Son of God, no longer child of fate, 
Like God he shall create." 

(2) In Righteousness 

But man's accomplishments in these material 
things do not show his loftiest and noblest at- 
tainments. In moral and spiritual things the 
human race reaches its highest and sublimest 
altitude. On mission fields, preachers, teachers, 



Attainments in Righteousness 205 

and hospital workers deny themselves all that 
is thought most desirable, and cheerfully sur- 
render life itself to elevate and save those who 
are less well off than they. And in many other 
fields, more ordinary and humble, equal devo- 
tion and sacrifice are witnessed. 

Nor is it too much to say that in their better 
moments all men feel that they have commis- 
sions not yet executed or hardly deciphered. 
No man who thinks but has hours when he 
hopes to reach greater and grander altitudes of 
nobility than any yet in sight, hours when he 
expects easily to meet, in the inevitable and end- 
less future, whatever demands or emergencies 
confront him. In a word, human nature is such 
a great and magnificent thing that it will not 
let man rest satisfied until he wakes in the 
similitude of the Redeemer, lives the divine life, 
and works miracles. 

Hail, two-legged midget, all creation bows in 
adoration before thee ! 



VI. SIGNIFICANCE OF THE COMMAND TO 
MULTIPLY 

" The chief object in the life of any animal,' ' 
says Prof. Carl H. Eigenmann, " is to leave 
another like it, in its place, when it dies.' , 

i. Awakened Interest 

Race propagation in case of the human fam- 
ily in civilized countries is now engaging public 
attention as seldom, if ever, before. The secular 
and religious press is earnestly discussing the 
problem, and conventions are called to consider 
the questions involved. 

2. Race Suicide 

Facts and statistics presented are to many 
thoughtful people alarming. Students in bi- 
ology and economics are quoting what Herbert 
Spencer wrote upwards of a half century ago, 
that, as time goes on, there will be a decrease of 
birth-rate in the human family, though prob- 

206 



Race Suicide 207 

ably also a decrease of death-rate. That the 
birth-rate is fast decreasing in families where 
it is most desirable it should increase, and in 
families that receive most benefit from modern 
civilization, is not a matter of doubt but is one 
of grave inquiry. 

In a recent article by Professor Cattell it is 
shown that " the Harvard graduate has on the 
average only the seven tenth of a son, and the 
Vassar graduate only one half of a daughter." 
The question is therefore raised whether civi- 
lization and education necessarily lead to the 
extinction of the human family, and if so, are our 
boasted civilization and education after all 
worth while ? 

As is well known, the fashion set by the so- 
called upper classes is followed by one class after 
another until the bottom is reached; hence 
deliberate, immoral, and unnatural interference 
is becoming, in class after class, the most pro- 
nounced cause of the diminishing birth-rate 
everywhere. Race suicide is the plain phrase 
in common use, though race murder is equally 
near the truth. 



208 Stars Not Inhabited 

3. Explicitness of the Command 

The Bible command is twice announced, once 
when the human race was starting on its career 
in Eden, and again when the survivors came 
from the Ark after the deluge. In each instance 
the words are identical, " Be fruitful and mul- 
tiply and replenish the earth. " (Gen. 1 128; 

9:1.) 

This language is not merely a suggestion as 
to what may be best, nor is it a requirement left 
to the discretion of mankind, but is clearly a 
command as pronounced and obligatory as any 
other recorded in the sacred Scriptures. 

There is, therefore, a religious as well as an 
economic duty resting upon all who have any 
influence over the popular mind and conscience 
courageously to preach and practice the gospel 
of saving the human race from suicide and 
extinction. 

4. More than Economics Involved 

But these considerations having to do with 
the continuance and welfare of the human race 
on earth are in the theological estimate of only 



More than Economics Involved 209 

secondary importance. If a future existence is 
ruled out of the problem, then who cares? 
Let race suicide play what part it may, or other 
suicides, without meddlesome interference from 
any one. 

On the other hand, if the present life is only 
a beginning, and if one human soul outvalues 
a universe of stars, of which from scientific as 
well as Biblical points of view there is no ques- 
tion ; if there is to be no duplicating of the human 
race when once exterminated, which the law 
that an extinct species is never recreated or 
restored would indicate ; if the universe is made 
for man and not man for the universe, and if 
God wants human souls as he wants nothing 
else except their love and obedience, which the 
entire trend of theology makes evident, — then 
the point of view is immensely changed ; the pos- 
sible birth and life of the child is of inestimable 
importance, and the displeasure of the Creator 
at the disregard of the command to multiply 
can be no less intense than that felt against any 
other form of selfish and sinful disobedience, 
that calls for indictment and penalty. 



210 Stars Not Inhabited 

And some time, when there is an increase of 
wisdom and righteousness, it will be felt more 
keenly than now that the chief mission of 
humanity is not so much to accumulate wealth, 
secure enviable political and social distinctions 
and position, as to exalt and honor the family 
which, in the providence of God, is permitted 
to bring human souls into existence and train 
them for the immortal life ; and that much else, 
if not most else, except love to God and man is 
merely incidental and comparatively unim- 
portant. If this is true, then nearly the whole 
structure of modern civilized society, from top 
to bottom, needs reconstruction. 



VII. MAN DETHRONED 

It would not be surprising if at this point the 
question were asked whether in the foregoing 
exaltation of the human family there has not 
been a failure to take into account that which 
makes a widely different showing for the race, 
and if there is not also very much of another 
side to all that has been said. 

Certainly there is a tremendous other side. 

The French writer, Pascal, in the following 
vigorous language describes the almost startling 
antagonisms and contradictions in human 
nature : 

11 What a chimera is man! What a singular phe- 
nomenon! What a chaos! What a scene of contra- 
riety, at once the glory and the scorn of the universe. 
If he boasts, I lower him ; if he lowers himself, I raise 
him; either way I contradict him, till he learns that 
he is a monstrous, incomprehensible mystery. Oh, the 
grandeur and the littleness, the excellence and the 
corruption, the majesty and the meanness, of human 
life!' 



212 Stars Not Inhabited 

The poet is quite right in his conception : 

" An heir of glory! frail child of dust! 
Helpless, immortal! insect, infinite! 
A worm! a God! I tremble at myself 
And in myself am lost." 

i. Evidence 

Of the transgressor's awful degradation and 
wretchedness there is no question. The picture 
is hideous and revolting as is nothing else on 
earth. Man ! who will burglarize and cheat, 
lie and steal, betray the most sacred trusts, 
plunder the child bereft of father and mother, 
" devour widows' houses and, for a pretence, 
make long prayers " ; man ! a beastly drunkard, 
filthy as swine, hopelessly prostituted, polluted 
in body, mind, and soul; who brings children 
into the world merely to gratify lust and then 
leaves them without the care that a wild beast 
gives to its young ; man ! who never speaks the 
name of God except in profanity or contempt, 
who murders his fellow-man for less than a 
handful of money, robs the dead bodies of vic- 
tims of a flood before the waters have subsided, 
and those of an earthquake before the tremor 



Bible Statement as to Man's Dethronement 213 

has ceased, — such is blighted and cursed hu- 
manity, as can be seen every day in the year and 
every hour of the day. 

2. Bible Statement 

And Bible language in its description and 
denunciation of doomed souls is to the last 
degree appalling: 

" Being filled with all unrighteousness, fornication, 
wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness ; full of envy, 
murder, debate, deceit, malignity; whisperers, back- 
biters, haters of God, despiteful, proud, boasters, 
inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, with- 
out understanding, covenantbreakers, without nat- 
ural affection, implacable, unmerciful." (Rom. 1: 
29-31-) 

" Their throat is an open sepulchre; with their 
tongues they have used deceit; the poison of asps is 
under their lips: whose mouth is full of cursing and 
bitterness: their feet are swift to shed blood: de- 
struction and misery are in their ways: and the way 
of peace have they not known : there is no fear of God 
before their eyes." (Rom. 3: 13-18.) 

" For we ourselves also were sometimes foolish, diso- 
bedient, deceived, serving divers lusts and pleasures, 
living in malice and envy, hateful, and hating one 
another. ' ' (Titus 3 : 3 . ) 



214 Stars Not Inhabited 

" Having eyes full of adultery, and that cannot cease 
from sin ; beguiling unstable souls : an heart they have 
exercised with covetous practices; cursed children." 
(2 Peter 2: 14.) 

Other phrases and words are familiar to 
the Bible reader: "Filthy dreamers," "evil 
beasts," " brute beasts," " drunkards," " wan- 
dering stars," " inventors of evil things," 
" dogs," " sorcerers," " scoffers," " idolaters," 
" whoremongers," " having eyes full of adul- 
tery," " serpents," " generation of vipers," 
11 liars," " murderers," whose " damnation slum- 
bereth not" — What art thou, awful, doomed, 
immortal soul? Art thou a god, or next to 
God, created in his similitude, for whom the 
stars were made? 

The answer that wells up from these abysses 
of degradation and woe is this : Yes, I am a god, 
but dethroned and ruined — perhaps forever. 

3. Mighty in His Dethronement 

And yet, even in this degradation, there are 
traces left of such majesty that man still ranks 
as the greatest of all creations. So great that 
he can face the most appalling scenes, resist 



Mighty in His Dethronement 2 1 5 

angels and principalities, visible and invisible, 
laugh at racks, gibbets, chains, fire, and all the 
powers of universal nature, and, though dying 
in the act, can lift his face and fist to heaven and 
defy God on his throne. Magnify the meanness 
and most desperate wickedness of the most sinful 
and most wretched man on earth, — even then 
it can be said that he is like fields and forests 
blighted by an autumn frost. One cannot tell 
what the frost-killed earth is like until the 
spring comes and the flowers bloom again. 

No more can one judge of the worth of a 
human being when damned and when he knows 
he is damned. Let judgment be suspended 
until the day of a possible reform, redemption, 
and translation dawns. (See Note xxvi.) 



VIII. RATIONALE 

Rationale is a word of considerable latitude. 
It may stand for a logical defense of views 
under discussion, or for a series of reasons given 
in support of positions taken, or for comments 
on such reasons. 

In the present instance, not having at com- 
mand a better word, it is employed to set forth 
the harmony between scientific facts and some 
of the revelations of the Holy Scriptures as 
interpreted by so-called Orthodox Christian 
believers. 

i. Origin of Things 

Frequently, in the foregoing discussion, evi- 
dence has been presented in support of the 
Christian conception of the universe, which is 
that an infinite and intelligent being, instead of 
chance or accident, made the stars and controls 
all affairs in the universe, and does this in the 

interest of humanity. The first part of this 

216 



Origin of Things 217 

statement is so obviously true that it is hardly 
necessary to present additional evidence in its 
support, except to mention a suggestive inci- 
dent in the life of Napoleon. 23 

On the voyage across the Mediterranean, in 
the early summer of 1798, Napoleon often 
selected three or four persons to discuss various 
subjects of his choosing. At one time the sub- 
ject was Immortality; at another, Are the 
stars inhabited? 

One beautiful, cloudless evening, the subject 
for discussion had been, Whether there is a 
God, and the disputants, who were officers, 
had proved, "to their own satisfaction," that 
there is no God. Napoleon had been an inter- 
ested listener. "Amid this clatter of mate- 
rialism," as Emerson called it, Napoleon, 
pointing to the glistening stars, said, "Very 
wise messieurs, who made all that?" Those 
advocates of atheism looked and were silenced. 

Not only is evidence of God's existence seen 
everywhere in the physical universe, but evi- 
dence of God's goodness is, to our strongest 
thinkers, no less manifest. 



2 1 8 Stars Not Inhabited 

Prof. Lionel S. Beale, already mentioned as 
having had scarcely an equal in. biological 
science, and well-informed in other fields of 
research, speaking before the Victoria Institute, 
London (1903), on the "Unseen Life of Our 
World and of Living Growth," employed this as 
thoroughly religious as it is scientific language : 

" But is it not time that thoughtful and intelligent 
persons of all classes had the general scientific facts 
of life and growth brought under their notice, so that 
they might judge whether these were really opposed 
to religious belief as many have been led to suppose? 

" My own conviction has long been that the more 
minutely living nature is studied, the more strongly 
will the reason be convinced of the evidence afforded 
by science alone of the infinite power, wisdom, and 
goodness of God." 

Now the point is that when God's existence 
and goodness are established, then all so-called 
supernatural phenomena pass into the realm of 
the possible. In other words, the universe of 
stars and the existence of God, being what may 
be called the supreme miracles, nothing else 
should occasion surprise, even though unac- 
countable as yet, and apparently contrary to 
the usual order of nature, 24 



Revelation 219 

2. Revelation 

If man is the only being in the universe 
having a physical body, a reasoning mind, and 
an immortal soul, and if in danger of going 
astray, then the reasonableness of an explicit 
revelation of God's will that sets forth an in- 
fallible rule of faith and practice becomes not 
only rational, but of imperative importance, 
especially since other revelations have been 
pronounced by those best able to judge alto- 
gether inadequate. 25 And this giving of a needed 
revelation is what Christian people believe has 
been done in providing for humanity the 
Sacred Scriptures. 

But a still more serious matter is that the 
vastness of the universe and the littleness of 
man have a tendency to cast doubt into the 
minds of many persons as to a future life. 
Since " we dwell upon a speck, illuminated by 
a spark," what hope can there be for anything 
more or beyond ? 

The fact seems to be that these misgivings 
find their readiest answer in the revelations of 
the gospel of Christ. 



220 Stars Not Inhabited 

The following inscription on Daniel Webster's 
tombstone, in part written by himself, ex- 
presses a thought that has come to many other 
men: 

'* ' Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief. ' 
11 Philosophical argument, especially that drawn 
from the vastness of the universe, in comparison with 
the apparent insignificance of this globe, has some- 
times shaken my reason for the faith that there is in 
me ; but my heart has always assured and reassured 
me that the Gospel of Jesus Christ must be a divine 
reality. The Sermon on the Mount cannot be a 
merely human production. This belief enters into the 
very depth of my conscience. The whole history of 
man proves it." 

3. The Trinity and Christology 

While discussing the majesty of humanity and 
the creation of man (page 183, etc.), language 
was employed that calls for a rational explana- 
tion, if one can be given, together with an 
interpretation of the words, "And God said, 
Let us make man in our image, after our 
likeness." 

The leading question is this: What is the 
meaning of the words, " in our image, after our 
likeness " or similitude? 



The Trinity and Christology 221 

Is it a moral or intellectual quality, or an 
outward, visible form, having dimensions like 
those of a human being, that is meant ? If the 
first, then man, since his start, has gone back- 
ward far and fast. If the second is meant, 
there would seem to be a conflict in Bible 
teaching, at least as expressed in the creeds of 
some of our Christian churches. 

The reply is that the similitude includes 
moral and intellectual qualities, and also an 
outward likeness. The Scriptural representation 
is that He who sits on the throne of the invisible 
and infinite God, or, in other words, He who 
holds the position of supreme authority and 
power, has a form, or an appearance, not phy- 
sical but spiritual. So that intelligent beings, 
beholding the ineffable glory of God's presence in 
the spiritual world, will not see three distinct, 
supreme personal beings, Father, Son, and 
Holy Spirit, as they are called in Christian 
theology, for that would be a tri-theistic con- 
ception of the deity which is not a Bible 
teaching. But there will be seen the eternal 
Logos, who is the manifestation of the invisible 



222 Stars Not Inhabited 

godhead. And it was that image or likeness 
in which man was created. 

The prophet Ezekiel, in one of his inspired 
visions, almost startles a thoughtful reader 
when saying: 

"And above the firmament that was over their 
heads was the likeness of a throne, as the appearance 
of a sapphire stone: and upon the likeness of the 
throne was the likeness as the appearance of a man 
above upon it." (Ezek. i : 26.) 

This was the similitude of which the book of 
Genesis speaks, — "the appearance of a man." 

It is of interest to note that Bible theology 
finds its support and counterpart in material- 
istic theology. In other words, the scientist 
discovers in nature what the theologian does 
in the Bible, indubitable evidence of a trinity, 
two factors of which are always invisible. 
That is, law, force, and manifestation consti- 
tute, from a scientific point of view, the one 
universe; nothing more, nothing less, enters 
into it. The minutest crystal, the tiniest 
flower, the world itself, and the wilderness of 
stars, all have these same properties, — law, 



The Trinity and Christology 223 

force, and manifestation; and if deprived of 
either one of these constituents, the crystal and 
the flower, the world and the universe, could 
not begin their formation nor continue their 
development, even if there were a beginning. 

And the psychologist in the nature of man 
discovers not only duality (Rom. 15: 25), but 
what may be termed an embryonic trinity that 
may become in future ages a clearly defined 
trinity, when man is more fully developed. 

The embryonic trinity in its present stage is 
the duality described by Paul, and experienced 
by every one, together with that something 
that prompts the man to decide for the better 
nature as against the evil one. 

It is obvious, therefore, that orthodoxy is 
misrepresented when its trinity is spoken of 
as being mathematical, which would be an 
absurdity. 

" There is but one living and true God, ever- 
lasting, without body or parts, of infinite power, 
wisdom, and goodness ; the Maker and Preserver 
of all things, visible and invisible," is the 
teaching of Christian theology. 26 



224 Stars Not Inhabited 

The trinity, therefore, may be said to be, for 
the want of a better term, metaphysical, having 
a threefold personality. So that, without what 
is called the second personality of the Godhead, 
that is, the Christ, in whose similitude man was 
created, the Father and Holy Spirit, which are 
the other two personalities, would not only 
remain forever invisible, but possibly neither 
one nor the other could exist, much less build 
a universe or create a man. And, too, this fact 
seems now pretty well assured, that there is no 
disassociated unit of any kind anywhere. It has 
been diligently searched for, but up to this time 
has successfully eluded all detectives. Scientific 
unitarianism has no existence, and a theological 
unitarianism has never yet been placed upon 
either a scientific or philosophical basis. 

4. God's Regard and Love for Man 

That man is here on the earth, created by 
supernatural interposition, that he is in pos- 
session of capabilities and powers that are 
astonishing when wisely considered, and that 
among all created intelligences he ranks second 



God's Regard and Love for Man 225 

to none, are conceptions that render God's 
amazing love for man, as revealed in the 
Scriptures, one of the most rational conclusions 
that can be reached by the mind of man. It is 
this greatness of the human soul and God's 
love for it that solve the mystery of the infinite 
patience of God as, day after day, he endures 
all sorts of insults, bears with man's defiant 
disobedience, and provides full and uncondi- 
tional forgiveness whenever the offer is not 
rejected. 

This greatness of man and this divine love 
for man are also an explanation of the inex- 
pressible anguish of God as revealed in the 
Scriptures, when the transgressor, irredeemably 
and willfully joined to his idols, is finally left to 
fill up the measure of his iniquity and pay the 
awful penalty imposed. (Hosea 4:17; Matt. 
23: 37; 25: 46; Rev. 22: 11.) 

This same greatness of man and love of God 
explain the protection afforded when " hands 
in which is the print of nails," time and again 
block the way of the transgressor in his mad 
rush to ruin. 



226 Stars Not Inhabited 

5. Interest of the Invisible World for Humanity 

When the greatness, grandeur, and solitari- 
ness of the human soul is taken into account, 
and when the belief that the stars were created 
for man's instruction, pleasure, and inspiration 
is established, then it is no longer out of har- 
mony with rational views that angels, if there 
are such beings, visited the earth in olden 
times, revealing their presence and talking with 
the people of God, or that they are now " min- 
istering spirits " and, though invisible, are 
eagerly watching the human race in its strug- 
gles, its conquests, and defeats; nor is it un- 
wisely said that when God announces, A man 
is born, that the angels pause in adoration and 
amazement; or that when it is announced, 
A man is born again, the angels break the si- 
lence and fill the invisible world with their com- 
mingled joy and praise. Were it otherwise, in- 
consistency would confront a thoughtful mind. 

6. Sacrificial Atonement 

If the stars and stellar systems were created 
in order that their numbers, splendor, and vast- 



Sacrificial A tenement 227 

ness may be helpful to man, stimulating his 
intellect and inspiring his soul ; if man's great- 
ness is such as to call forth the fullness of God's 
love; if man has fallen into sin, and is in dan- 
ger of the most appalling calamity, — the final 
wreck of an unsaved soul, — then it follows that 
no possible sacrifice is unreasonable if such sac- 
rifice were required to restore man to an heritage 
that sin has forfeited. The startling question 
of Christ, " What shall a man give in exchange 
for his soul? " has never yet been answered. 
There is no equivalent in the entire universe, is 
what Christ seems to have had in mind. 

It is, therefore, on grounds manifestly ra- 
tional, and in the light of Bible revelation, that 
Christian theology has formulated its doctrine 
of vicarious atonement : that ' ' God so loved the 
world that He gave His only begotten Son " ; — 
and that the Son, the better to accomplish 
the divine purpose, " took not on him the 
nature of angels; but . . . the seed of Abra- 
ham," and " became obedient unto death, even 
the death of the cross," that man might be re- 
deemed. (Heb. 2 : 16-18 ; Phil. 2 : 6-8.) 



228 Stars Not Inhabited 

The Atonement, as thus set forth in Christian 
theology, even were there nothing else, would 
be ample evidence of the immeasurable love of 
God for man, of the divine estimate of man's 
transcendence and of the assurance that the 
physical universe was made for him and that 
death will not end all. 

Is it not also rational to conclude that a God 
of infinite goodness would leave at least one 
royal and magnificent gateway open through 
which it would be possible for a sinner, though 
very far gone, to escape from his sins and 
regain what is lost ? 27 

And this also should be said: that what is 
fundamental in a sacrificial atonement is in 
evidence everywhere at least to this extent: 
that life is secured by suffering and death. 
Nothing lives except by the death of something 
else. Like the Son of God, the sun in the 
heavens is bearing its cross and is on its journey 
to a Calvary, giving up itself every moment, 
that the planets may shine and that the earth 
may bring forth and nourish all living things. 
(See page 32.) 



Moral Argument 229 

7. Moral Argument 

The truthfulness or falseness of theories is, 
with much accuracy, tested by their effect, 
whether beneficial or otherwise, upon human 
thought and conduct. When one thinks of 
man as a mote, and of death as ending all, the 
effect on most minds is depressing and vastly 
different from that of an opposite view, which 
places man above angels, principalities, and 
powers, with immortality and another world of 
transcendent beauty in prospect. There can be 
no doubt that an adequate conception of man's 
greatness and destiny, or that even a partial 
view of what God's love has done for man, will 
make it harder for one to enter the path that 
leads to darkness and distress, and easier to 
enter the one that leads beyond the stars and 
to the throne of God. It would seem, also, that 
the views advocated in this entire discussion 
ought to be an inspiration and help to souls 
weighed down by sin and sorrow or that for 
other reasons are hungering for what has not 
yet been reached. 

And, likewise, burdens that are heavy could 



230 Stars Not Inhabited 

more easily be borne if the thought were well 
in mind that all trials are sent, or permitted, by 
One who knows they are needful in unfolding 
what has been involved in human nature, and 
in fitting the burdened one for a destiny suited 
to those for whom the stars were made and the 
whole universe of material things exists. 

If men would dwell oftener in these religious 
realms they would be more likely to maintain 
a better control over the daily life, that nothing 
be done or said that ill becomes those made in 
the similitude of God. And the exhortations: 
" Lay aside every weight," " abstain from all 
appearance of evil/' " keep thyself pure," 
" hold that fast which thou hast that no man 
take thy crown " (Heb. 12:1; 1 Thess. 5 122; 
1 Tim. 5: 22; Rev. 3: 2) would be heeded, in- 
stead of being disregarded, as too frequently 
they are amid the turmoil and tumults of 
human life. 

The belief that men are not motes, or worms, 
but children of God, as are no others of His 
creatures, is likewise consistent with what is 
repeatedly enjoined in the Scriptures, that no 



Moral A rgument 231 

man should live for himself, but is to help others 
in their efforts to lay off the garments of hu- 
miliation and deck themselves in the robes of 
an imperial and a divine birthright. 

And if what has been repeated in the pages 
of this booklet is near the truth, — and who will 
show that it is not the exact truth ? — then the 
poorest day-laborer, and the poorest day-labor- 
er's wife and child, are entitled not merely to 
the charity of alms, but to the profoundest 
respect of both earth and heaven. 

This distinction and recognition are de- 
manded not always in view of what the toiling 
poor may seem to be, or perhaps really now 
are, but in view of the possibilities that inhere 
in their immortal souls. They are these strug- 
gling and, often, suffering men, women, and 
children, carelessly and coldly turned aside, 
whose inheritance is all things, whose future is 
endless, whose development has no bounds, 
and whose final promised exaltation is beyond 
all estimate. 

It would, therefore, seem that the Christian 
Church has well-nigh misconceived its mission 



232 Stars Not Inhabited 

if organized chiefly for the encouragement or 
entertainment of its members, or chiefly for 
prayer or song, or for the preaching service 
heard in the pulpit, or to strengthen the bonds 
of fellowship of the ninety and nine safely en- 
rolled in the Christian household. Its mission, 
rather, is to give heart and hand to " rescue 
work " among the lost, the outcasts, the ragged, 
the forlorn, those on mountain sides, in high- 
ways and hedges, in civilized and heathen 
lands, for the souls of all such are immortal and 
priceless, any one of whom is of greater value 
than ten thousand million universes of stars. 

When the Church gives itself to such service 
it will, as in no other way, represent Christ, 
who came to seek and save the lost, and whose 
first converts and disciples were the hard- 
working fishermen of Galilee. 

When Christ is truly represented by those 
who bear his name, then will the Christian 
religion witness its hour of triumph, and in- 
quiring souls everywhere on earth will no 
longer doubt which of the world's religions to 
embrace. 



Heaven and Immortality 233 

8. Heaven and Immortality 

There is nothing of which the physicist is 
more certain than that the material universe, 
as now constituted, had a beginning, unless it 
is that it will have an end. And to a certain 
extent it is known where the earth among 
the stars now is, and which way it is going, 
and it is positively known that its final 
goal will be reached; but just when, no one 
knows. 

In this changing order of things, the question 
of immense importance that the physicist sel- 
dom attempts to answer relates to a possible 
existence of the human race when its career on 
earth shall finally end. 

It is not surprising that the magnitude of 
the universe, the number and distances of the 
stars, have, from a purely materialistic point of 
view, chilling effects upon one's thoughts of 
immortality ; there seems no room or place for 
heaven, and man appears to be of so small 
account that it is of little consequence either 
way whether or not life is snuffed out forever at 
death. 



234 Stars Not Inhabited 

But when it is felt that man is the most 
important and most highly honored being in 
the material universe, and that all the splendors 
of the stellar universe were made for him, and 
that God's interest is more centered in him 
than in all else, then doubts of immortality 
easily disappear, the only rational conclusion 
being that man will remain amid the eternities, 
that somewhere is preparing a place no less 
beautiful or wonderful than the glistening stars, 
and that man, the child of God, will move on 
in triumphal processions, having the freedom 
of all the spiritual and unseen worlds in the 
infinitudes of space. 



NOTES 

I. (Page 19.) See also Sir David Brewster's 
" More Worlds than One " (1854). Compare Dr. 
William Derham's " Astro theology " (1719); Dr. 
William Paley's "Natural Theology " (1802); Sir 
Humphry Davy's " Last Days of a Philosopher " 
(181 5), and Dr. Thomas Chalmers' " Discourses on 
Astronomy " (1817). 

II. (Page 24.) The appearance of Halley's comet 
in 1456 spread terror over Europe and Asia. According 
to the chroniclers of that date, " Pope Calixtus III ordered 
that the bells in the churches should be rung every day 
at noon, and that universal prayer should be offered to 
exorcise the portent and to check the advance of the 
Turks." A denial of these statements has been made by 
later writers. 

Year after year, 1832, 1857, and 1872, notable 
comets come in sight, but harmlessly pass away. 
Nor is there danger from their coming unless they 
should some time approach near enough to deluge 
the earth in a poisonous gas of which they are largely 
composed. 

III. (Page 32.) An outburst on the sun, reported 
from Oxford, England, November 16, 1908, was 
observed by Professor Ambau, director of the Rad- 
cliffe Observatory, at 11.45 o'clock in the morning. 
An immense flame shot up at the rate of more than 
ten thousand miles a minute, until it reached a 

235 



236 Stars Not Inhabited 

height of three hundred and twenty-five thousand 
miles. At 12.10 it broke into fragments and disap- 
peared. 

IV. (Page 34.) For other interesting myths as to 
the moon see " Notes on Unnatural History," by 
Edmund Marsden Goldsmith. The man in the moon 
has been given the name of Jacob, and instead of 
seeing a man some people see a toad. 

V. (Page 38.) A note should be made of the fact 
that Professor Pickering, in an address before the Tech- 
nology Society of Arts (December, 1909), suggests that 
the moon may not be so dead a world as the gener- 
ally accepted view would make out, and, though 
the temperature ranges from below zero at night 
to a boiling degree at midday, yet the professor 
thinks this may not be absolutely prohibitive of a 
low form of plant life of the algae class. Scarcely 
any scientist of high standing, however, concurs in 
this opinion. 

VI. (Page 47.) It is to be noted that Eros, classed 
with the planetoids, owing to the eccentricity of its 
orbit, is sometimes nearer the earth than either 
Mars or Venus ever are or probably ever can be. 

VII. (Page 60.) For a fuller discussion of this 
point see author's booklets, " Adam and Eve; His- 
tory or Myth " (1904), and " Collapse of Evolution " 

(1905). 

VIII. (Page 71.) Quotations from the account of 
this noteworthy ascension, translated by Dr. Latson, 
may be of interest: 

" At twenty-three thousand feet we were standing 
up in the car. Sivel, who had given up for a moment, 
was reinvigorated. Croce-Spinelli was motionless in 



Notes 237 

front of me. I felt stupefied and frozen. I wished to 
put on my fur gloves, but, without being conscious 
of it, the action of taking them from my pocket 
necessitated an effort that I could no longer make. 
I copy verbatim the following lines which were 
written by me, although I have no very distinct re- 
membrance of doing so. They are traced in a 
hardly legible manner by a hand trembling with cold: 

" ' My hands are frozen. I am all right. We are 
all right. Fog in the horizon, with little rounded 
cirrus. We are ascending. Croce pants. He inhales 
oxygen. Sivel closes his eyes. Croce also closes his 
eyes. Sivel throws out ballast.' These last words 
are hardly readable. Sivel seized his knife and cut 
successively three cords and the three bags emptied 
themselves, and we ascended rapidly. 

" When Sivel cut away the bags of ballast at the 
height of about twenty-four thousand feet I seemed 
to remember that he was sitting at the bottom of the 
car, and nearly in the same position as Croce-Spinelli. 
For my part, I was in the angle of the car, thanks to 
which support I was able to hold up, but I soon felt 
too weak even to turn my head to look at my com- 
panions. This was about 1.30 p.m. At 2.08 p.m. I 
awoke for a moment and found the balloon rapidly 
descending. I was able to cut away a bag of ballast 
to check the speed, and wrote in my note-book the 
following words : 

" ' We are descending. Temperature, 3 . I throw 
out ballast. Barometer, 12.4 inches. We are de- 
scending. Sivel and Croce still in a fainting state at 
the bottom of the car. Descending very rapidly.' 

" Hardly had I written these lines when a kind of 



238 Stars Not Inhabited 

trembling seized me, and I fell back weakened again. 
There was a violent wind from below upward, denot- 
ing a very rapid descent. After some minutes I felt 
myself shaken by the arm and recognized Croce, who 
had revived. ' Throw out ballast,' he said to me, * we 
are descending ' ; but I could hardly open my eyes, and 
did not see whether Sivel was awake. I called to mind 
that Croce unfastened the aspirator, which he then 
threw overboard, and he threw out ballast, rugs, etc. 

" All this is an extremely confused remembrance, 
quickly extinguished; for again I fell back inert 
more completely than before and it seemed to me 
that I was dying. What happened? It is certain 
that the balloon, relieved of a great weight of ballast, 
at once ascended to the higher regions. 

" At 3.30 p.m. I opened my eyes again. I felt 
dreadfully giddy and oppressed, but gradually came 
to myself. The balloon was descending with fright- 
ful speed, and making great oscillations. I crept 
along on my knees, and pulled Sivel and Croce by 
the arm. ' Sivel! Croce!' I exclaimed. * Wake 
up!' My two companions were huddled up motion- 
less in the car, covered by their cloaks. . . . 

" To relate what happened afterward is impossible. 
I felt a frightful wind; we were still nine thousand 
seven hundred feet high. There remained in the car 
two bags of ballast, which I threw out. I was draw- 
ing near the earth. I looked for my knife to cut the 
small rope which held the anchor, but could not find 
it. I was like a madman, and continued to call, 
4 Sivel ! Sivel ! ' By good fortune I was able to put 
my hand upon my knife and detach the anchor at 
the right moment. 



Notes 239 

11 The shock on coming to the ground was dreadful. 
The balloon seemed as if it was being flattened. I 
thought it was going to remain where it had fallen, 
but the wind was high and it was dragged across 
fields, the anchor not catching. The bodies of my 
unfortunate friends were shaken about in the car, 
and I thought every moment they would be jerked 
out. At length, however, I seized the valve line and 
the gas soon escaped from the balloon, which lodged 
against a tree. It was then four o'clock. On stepping 
out I was seized with a feverish attack and sank 
down and thought for a moment that I was going to 
join my friends in the next world, but I came to. I 
found the bodies of my friends cold and stiff. I had 
them put under shelter in an adjacent barn." 

IX. (Page 71.) Professor Todd is reported to have 
thus described what he intends to do in order to 
reach the highest possible altitude : 

" I am going to get the largest balloon I can find. 
In the basket of this I will have two aluminum tanks, 
one for the aeronaut and one for myself. Each tank 
will be about six feet high and three feet in diameter. 
The riveting and construction will be of the best and 
duly approved by an expert, for if either of the tanks 
should give way at a high altitude, the man inside 
would be a gone goose. 

14 There will be three or four windows, the same as 
those used in a diving suit, around the sides, and the 
bottom of the cylinder will be of clear thick glass. 
There will also be a hand air compressor, or, perhaps, 
a foot pump instead, so that the hands of each inmate 
will be left free. 

" Within the tank occupied by the aeronaut, per- 



240 Stars Not Inhabited 

haps also in the tank occupied by myself, there will 
be mechanical means for performing certain work 
outside, such as throwing out the ballast when de- 
sired, without diminishing the desired pressure in the 
tanks. 

" The newspapers are right and they are wrong. 
They are right in saying that I am going to make a 
balloon ascension — I hope a very high one — and 
that the balloon will be provided with a wireless 
apparatus. . But they are wrong in saying that the 
object of this trip is to establish communication 
with Mars. 

" The object of my balloon trip is to learn whether, 
at a height of twenty-live thousand feet, air pumped 
from the surrounding atmosphere and compressed 
will support human life. It is my theory that it will. 
If my balloon experiments prove that I am right, 
then I will have established the feasibility of a plan 
I have for building the highest and, consequently, 
the most efficient astronomical observatory in the 
world. This observatory will be on the summit of 
Mt. Chimborazo, in the Andes of Ecuador. This 
peak has an altitude of twenty-one thousand feet. 
It is perpetually covered with snow and ice. The 
atmosphere is so rarefied that human beings cannot 
breathe it and live. ,, 

X. (Page 112.) It is the opinion of Prof. T. J. J. 
See, who is in charge of the naval observatory at 
Mare Island, given in an address before the Astro- 
nomical Society of the Pacific, November 27, 1909, 
that the planets were at some period captured by 
the sun; that the satellites likewise were captured 
by their several planets and that before their cap- 



Notes 241 

ture the smaller planets, including Mars, while in a 
plastic state, were for ages stormed and plowed by- 
planetoids. This " impact theory," he claimed, 
is clearly evinced by a study of the surface of the 
moon. His reported words are these: 

M The roughness of the surface of our moon shows 
how many hard knocks it has received in the past. 
Every planet has gone through a similar experience, 
but those having atmosphere and oceans, like the 
earth, have suffered such great geological changes 
that they have long since lost all trace of ancient 
battering, while these indentations have survived on 
the airless and waterless moon to show us the terrific 
process by which worlds are formed. 

" About the newer craters, as Copernicus, Tycho, 
Aristarchus, etc., the bright rays radiating in all 
directions show that at the time of the collisions 
the force of the impact had been such that matter 
had been melted, vaporized, and driven out from 
these centers in all directions. A satellite hitting the 
moon might have its temperature raised to four 
thousand degrees or higher, and the bright rays from 
the craters are due to the spattering of highly heated 
matter. ' ' 

The following is Professor See's description of a 
typical crater on the moon : 

" A large circular depression, with steep walls in- 
side and sloping walls outside, and a small peak in 
the center, with the top of it below the average level 
of the lunar surface. If any one supposed the craters 
to be volcanic, it was impossible to account for the 
depressions where the craters stood, and no forces 
directed from within could dig out the circular trough 



242 Stars Not Inhabited 

about the peak in the center. Then, too, the way the 
craters lay over one another showed that they were 
nothing but satellite indentations." 

While this view of Professor See is opposed to the 
opinion generally held since the days of Galileo, 
which is that the lunar craters are due to volcanic 
action, yet the impact theory was suggested by 
Professor Proctor as long ago as 1873, an d had been 
mentioned as a curiosity by Newcomb in 1878, and 
had been more fully developed by Dr. G. K. Gilbert, 
of the United States Geological Survey, in 1892. The 
theory, however, is gaining favor at the present time 
and easily explains many of the surface phenomena 
of Mars. 

XI. (Page 123.) Professor Lowell, speaking of the 
theory, now well established, that Venus has no 
revolution on its axis, like that of the earth, employed 
these words in a late issue of the Popular Science 
Monthly : 

" For Venus to have the same hemisphere exposed 
everlastingly to sunlight while the other is perpetu- 
ally turned away, must cause a state of things of 
which we can form but faint conception from what 
we know on earth. Baked for aeons, without let-up, 
and still baking, the sunward face must, if unshielded, 
be a Tophet surpassing our powers adequately to 
portray. And unshielded it must be, as we shall 
presently see. Reversely, the other must be a hyper- 
borean expanse to which our polar regions are tem- 
perate abodes. For upon one whole hemisphere of 
Venus the sun never shines, never so much as peeps 
above the star-studded horizon. Night eternal reigns 
over half of her globe! The thought would appall 



Notes 243 

the most intrepid of our Arctic explorers and prevent 
at least everybody from going to the pole ; or, rather, 
what here replaces it, ' through the dark continent/ " 
These statements and facts offered by Professor 
Lowell settle adversely the suggestions of F.W. Hensel, 
Fellow of the "Royal Astronomical Society, " pub- 
lished in the June number of the Knowledge and 
Scientific News (London), that Venus may be 
inhabited. 

XII. (Page 128.) In a London publication, 
Nature, November 15, 1906, the statement is 
made that the " total number of stars usually sup- 
posed to be visible in the largest telescopes and on the 
best photographs is about one hundred million. " 

The astronomer, J. E. Gore, in The Observatory, 
an English publication, reduces the number to 
sixty-four million one hundred and eighty-four 
thousand seven hundred and fifty-seven. 

It is only fair to add that Professor Gore is of the 
opinion that a large number of the heavenly bodies 
are suitable for habitation. He estimates that " there 
are at least ten million of a type closely resembling 
our own sun, and that if only one in ten has a planet 
revolving around it at the proper distance, possessing 
the appropriate conditions, there ought to be at least 
one million worlds fitted for the support of animal 
life." 

XIII. (Page 133.) There are three explanations 
for the twinkling of the so-called fixed stars. The 
first is the passing of small bodies in space between 
the star and the eye. While it is unquestionably true 
that " there are millions of fragments of disrupted 
worlds flying around in orbits about our sun," yet 



244 Stars Not Inhabited 

that they cause the twinkling is far from a satisfac- 
tory solution of the phenomenon. 

The second theory is that air currents cause the 
twinkling. This explanation is perhaps more satis- 
factory than the first mentioned, but is by no means 
generally accepted. 

The third view is that these distant stars are suns 
in a state of fierce combustion and that the flashing is 
the leaping of names from their surfaces, as is the 
case with our own sun. 

XIV. (Page 134.) Stars are not really destroyed 
when they disappear, nor are they moved from their 
appointed places in the heavens. Their fires seem 
extinguished, though sometimes these perishing suns, 
as in case of Mira in 1779, burst forth " in a desperate 
struggle against the final extinction.' ' 

XV. (Page 138.) Prof. J. E. Gore, in a recent 
article written for Knowledge and Illustrated Scientific 
News (London) , claims that the star nearest the earth 
is Alpha Centauri instead of Theta, as is generally 
thought; but even if this is so, the distance in either 
case exceeds the twenty million of millions of miles. 

XVI. (Page 138.) The Bible student notes with 
interest the fact that the Scriptures are wont to 
employ the stars as an illustration of limitless num- 
ber and limitless space. 

XVII. (Page 150.) Though Christian scholars, or- 
thodox in their faith, never admitted that the over- 
throw of the Ptolemaic philosophy (127 a.d.), which 
taught that the sun and planets revolve about the 
earth as their center, and the establishment of the 
Copernican system (sixteenth and seventeenth cen- 
turies), which taught that the sun is the center of the 



Notes 245 

solar system, were at all fatal to the teachings of the 
Bible, still these views of Dr. Wallace are gratifying to 
many minds for the reason that their tendency is 
towards harmonizing the greatness of man with his 
position in the physical universe. See Dr. John 
Fiske. Statements, pp. 173-4. 

XVIII. (Page 153.) In a recent lecture delivered 
in Berlin, one of Germany's leading astronomers 
Johannes Riem, announced as his conviction that the 
earth out of all the billions of celestial bodies is the 
only one that is inhabited or inhabitable. 

XIX. (Page 160.) The Shu King, the oldest 
known scientific treatise, states that two thousand 
years before the present era the Chinese astronomers 
determined the positions of the sun at the equinoxes 
and solstices by means of four stars, and it is a note- 
worthy fact that modern astronomers, for that pur- 
pose, can make no better selection. 

As to the execution of the two untrustworthy 
astronomers, Ho and Hi, it is related that they were 
intoxicated when the eclipse occurred and were in no 
condition to superintend the required rites, such as 
the beating of drums, shooting of arrows, shouting 
and other like performances intended to frighten away 
the great dragon who was about to swallow the sun. 

Though the eclipse was only partial, yet as a warn- 
ing to future astronomers Ho and Hi were put to death. 

XX. (Page 167.) The recent revival of astrology 
and of other occult delusions is only a repetition of 
what has been attempted time and again. Such 
revivals have their day, which will be shorter and 
shorter as the world increases in knowledge and 
wisdom. 



246 Stars Not Inhabited 

XXI. (Pages 175 and 184.) The quotations from 
the Bible in a few instances are translations from the 
original text by the author; others are from the 
Revised Version, but for the larger part they are 
taken from the Authorized Version. 

XXII. (Page 193.) It may be asked, Why did the 
apostle employ the word " angels " instead of trans- 
lating literally the word Elohim? 

The reply is that nearly all the quotations from 
the Old Testament into the New are from the Septua- 
gint version, and Paul, in view of what he was trying 
especially to impress upon the minds of his readers, 
most likely did not think it wise to divert attention 
by changing the reading, or entering into a learned 
explanation of the Hebrew text, especially as the 
entire discussion in this part of his epistle makes 
man's supremacy perfectly clear. 

XXIII. (Page 217.) In addition to what was said 
as to supernatural interposition (pages 62-65), it 
may in this connection be noted that in the origin of 
things the nebular theory, promulgated by Laplace, 
and the evolutionary hypothesis with its several pro- 
moters, have been made to help each other in the 
contention against theism. But both theories are 
coming more and more into difficulty and may fall 
together, and certainly will do so if the supernatural 
is ruled out. 

The geologist and paleontologist require from 
fifty to five hundred million years for the stratifica- 
tion and denudations of the earth's crusts, and the 
modifications of animal types as taught by evolution, 
not including the human race. 

Darwin demands three hundred million years, Lyell 



Notes 247 

reckoned on two hundred and forty millions, and 
Huxley suggested the round number of a thousand 
million years in which to arise from protoplasm to 
man. 

The conflict is between the geologist and the phy- 
sicist. Either the geologist must change his esti- 
mates by hundreds of millions of years, or the astro- 
physicist must give up the nebular theory as the founda- 
tion of the condensation hypothesis of the sun's heat and 
the earth's present temperature. 

The views of the geologist are so well established 
that the nebular hypothesis will have to yield to 
some other theory as to the origin of the solar sys- 
tem. Supernatural interposition provides a key for 
these difficulties and at present nothing else does this. 
And no less is supernatural interposition called for 
when man, ten thousand years ago, after the wreck of 
the glacial period, appeared on the earth. 

Nor does the supernatural appear to be any less 
called for in adjusting other phenomena that are in- 
explicable on the nebular hypothesis or on " the 
theory of accretion." 

There is especially to be noticed the disposition of 
matter in the planetary system, or, as Dr. M'Cosh 
states the case when referring to the adjustment of 
the heavenly bodies with their properties in respect 
to space, " They never have been traced to the 
action of the primordial laws of nature, but seem to 
have been fixed at the original setting up of the 
machine by a power transcending those laws." 
Manifestly, therefore, a supernatural power. 

Newton, speaking of the wonderful adjustments in 
planetary genesis, speaks r thus : ' ' This admirable 



248 Stars Not Inhabited 

arrangement can only be the work of an intelligent 
and most powerful being/ ' 

Professor Proctor announces an opinion that 
thoughtful scientists will hardly question, " A gradu- 
ally contracting nebulous mass could scarcely have 
produced a system in which the masses are at first 
view so irregularly scattered as in the solar system." 

In other words, the distribution of matter in the 
solar system as to its perpetuity, adjustments, and 
interdependencies has found no explanation compa- 
rable with the theistic conception. A sane mind repu- 
diates the chance theories, and evolution has nothing 
to suggest. 

As matters stand to-day, theism and nothing else 
is placarded far and near on the sidereal universe. 

XXIV. (Page 218.) It is a psychological marvel, 
quite as curious as any other, that certain skeptical 
philosophers put their hands over their eyes and at- 
tempt to courtesy God out of the universe, while at the 
same time they are forced to acknowledge that what he 
represents is present in power and wisdom everywhere. 

David Friedrich Strauss for a time tried to rid his 
mind of all theistic notions, but the universal beauty 
and fitness of things at length compelled him to ac- 
knowledge the existence of a Something which he 
called " the All, existing in and for itself eternally.' ' 

In his work entitled " Old Faith and New " (1872), 
he employs this remarkable language, " We demand 
the same piety for our cosmos that the devout of old 
demanded for his God." 

Professor Clifford, likewise, while discussing " Cos- 
mic Emotion," holds up his cosmos as an object of 
reverence and worship. 



Notes 249 

Dr. Lycock and several other scientists of his 
class, though ignoring and even denying the existence 
of God, yet finding overwhelming evidences of design 
and skill in the universe, have attempted to occupy a 
sort of middle ground, claiming that the universe was 
originally the product of, and is now under the con- 
trol of, an " unconscious intelligence/ ' 

Professor Bain, holding that nothing but matter 
exists, is forced to define matter as a " double-faced 
somewhat, having a spiritual and a physical side." 

Now since these men find something which is over 
matter or around it; something that pervades it and 
fills it with force; something that is not matter nor 
atoms of matter; something that is able to do in the 
physical universe all that Jehovah can do in designing 
and carrying out designs, and something that is an 
object of reverence and worship, — why, therefore, 
do not these philosophers speak the word " God " ? If 
they do not mean God, then their language is unin- 
telligible, if not down-right nonsense. 

XXV. (Page 219.) Nature and classical literature 
aside from the Scriptures leave the world in dark- 
ness as to matters concerning which knowledge is 
most earnestly desired. 

The prayer of the whole devout Greek world 
appears to be summed up in the words, En se phi hi 
odes son — " Give me light, let me die." 

Plato spoke hesitatingly of the life hereafter, and 
Socrates, having told his friends what he thought of 
life and death, died with this confession on his lips, 
" Such is my view since you wish to know it; but 
whether it is true or not the gods only can say." 

" Give me consolation, great and strong," ex- 



250 Stars Not Inhabited 

claimed Pliny, " of which I have never heard or read." 
"The philosophers of the Academy affirm nothing. 
They despair of arriving at any certain knowledge," 
was Cicero's complaint. And Virgil, Rome's most 
honored poet, found no way for the souls of his dead 
to enter the Elysian fields of which he wrote, and his 
crowds of ghosts are almost identical with those of 
Homer, though he had the advantage of living a 
thousand years later. 

XXVI. (Page 223.) Compare Deut. 6: 4; 1 Chron. 
17: 20; Is. 44: 8; 47: 4; Matt. 19: 17; John 17: 3; 
Acts 14: 15; Rom. 16: 27; 1 Cor. 8: 5, 6; Eph.. 3: 9. 

XXVII. (Page 228.) For illustrations of the far- 
reaching extent of God's mercy in the redemption of 
the sinner through faith in Christ, the reader is re- 
ferred to the conversion of such criminals as Jerry 
MacAuley, sots like Col. H. M. Hadley, wrecks like 
John G. Wooley, and drunkards like Francis Murphy. 

These men, MacAuley, Hadley, Wooley, and 
Murphy, became kings and priests in their devotion 
to God and to their fellow-men. 



INDEX 

Authors and Persons 



Agassiz, supremacy man, 199. 
Allen, ancient belief that stars are 

inhabited, 162. 
Ambau, sun flames, 235. 
Amos, naming the constellations, 

164. 
Anaxagoras, the moon another 

earth, 161. 
Anderson, discovery of a new star, 

132. 
Andre, opposed to Flammarion, 

no. 
Antoniadi, no canals on Mars, in. 
Arago, plurality of worlds, 19. 
Aratus, names constellations, 160. 
Bacon, inductive science, 13. 
Bain, " double-faced somewhat," 

249. 

Ball, opposed to plurality of 
worlds, 142. 

Barnard, markings on Mars, 88; 
no water on Mars, 98. 

Beale, opposed to plurality of 
worlds, 150-152; the stars and 
the Creator, 218. 

Beaumont, regularity of the Pyre- 
nees, 82. 

Beer, white spots on Mars, 49. 

Bessel, star distances, 138. 

Bode, inhabitants of Jupiter, 40. 

Brashear, plurality of worlds, 21. 

Brewster, plurality of worlds, 120; 
the sun and its inhabitants, 30; 
the moon and its inhabitants, 
34; Jupiter and its inhabitants, 



40; Uranus, Neptune, 44; the 

planets of other suns and their 

inhabitants, 129. 
Bruno, plurality of worlds, 19. 
Calixtus, order as to comets, 235. 
Campbell, dark bodies, 27; no 

water on Mars, 98; no canals on 

Mars, 108, 109; transverse 

markings on Mars, 116; Nova 

Persei, 132. 
Cassini,. re volution of Mars, 49. 
Cattell, extinction of human race, 

207. 
Chalmers, plurality of worlds, 19; 

quotations from, 128; dis- 
courses, 235. 
Cicero, complaint, 250. 
Clifford, the " Cosmos," 248. 
Cope, view on theism, 64. 
Copernicus, effect of his views, 173. 
Dana, the supremacy of man, 199. 
Darwin, remarks on Jupiter, 42; 

his evolution discredited, 61; 

supremacy of man, 199; length 

geological history, 246. 
Davy's " Last Days," 235. 
Daws, drawings of Mars, 51; no 

water on Mars, 98. 
Derham's "Astrotheology," 235. 
Douglass, the illusive character of 

the canals on Mars, 99. 
Eigenmann, object of life, 206. 
Elliott, the inhabitants of the sun, 

29. 
Evans, markings on Mars, 100. 



251 



252 



Stars Not Inhabited 



Exignus, cherubim on fixed stars, 
130. 

Fiske, the design of the universe, 
173; on the supremacy of man, 
198. 

Flammarion, plurality of worlds, 
20; on late observations on 
Mars, 53 ; communications with 
Mars, 55; markings on Mars, 
100; play of imagination, 105; 
Frenchmen opposed to his views, 
no. 

Fontenelle, " Plurality of Worlds," 
19. 

Galileo, the planet Mars, 48. 

Gilbert! " impact theory," 242. 

Glashier, high elevations, 70. 

Goldsmith, moon myths, 236. 

Gore, number of stars, 243; near- 
est fixed star, 244. 

Hadley's conversion, 250. 

Haeckel, evolution discredited, 61. 

Halley's comet, 68, 235. 

Hayne's " Indian Fancy," 130. 

Hensel, Venus inhabited, 243. 

Herbert's couplet, 138. 

Herschel, Sir John and William, 
plurality of worlds, 19; 
planetoids inhabited, 25; play 
of imagination, 10 s. 

Herschel, Sir William, belief that 
the sun is inhabited, 30; that 
the moon is inhabited, 34; that 
Jupiter is inhabited, 40; Mars 
like the earth, 49, 50. 

Heward, objection to canal theory, 
92. 

Hi, Chinese astronomer, 159, 245. 

Ho, Chinese astronomer, 159, 245. 

How, life on Mars, 74. 

Huxley, length of geological his- 
tory, 247. 

Huygens, map of Mars, 49. 

Job, naming constellations, 160. 

Kaempffert, future of the sun, 67. 



Kelvin, future of the earth, 66. 

Kepler, plurality of worlds, 19. 

KirchhofF, iron in the sun, 10. 

Lampland, photographs of Mars, 
97. 

Lange's comment, 192. 

Langley's bolometer, n. 

Laplace, plurality of worlds, 19; 
Chinese calculations, 160. 

Lardner, planetoids inhabited, 25; 
exterior planets, 43 ; the inhabi- 
tants of Mars, Venus, and Mer- 
cury, 50. 

Latson, the aeronauts' experience, 
71; quotation, 236. 

Lodge, plurality of worlds, 21. 

Lowell, temperature of moon, 37; 
late observations on Mars, 53; 
Martians in advance of human- 
ity, 57; evolution of life on 
Mars, 59; drying up of the 
earth, 66; no man on Mars, 74, 
91; canals on Mars, 77, 78; 
disappearing canals, 89; specific 
gravity on Mars, 95; polar snow 
caps on Mars, 97; scarcity of 
water on Mars, 99; new canals, 
113, 114; late phenomena not 
destructive, 117; no scientific 
support, 120; Venus has same 
face to sun, 122; not inhabited, 
122; ethical purpose, 125; no 
revolution of Venus, 242. 

Lycock, " unconscious intelli- 
gence," 249. 

Lyell, length geological history, 
246. 

MacAuley, reformed, 250. 

M'Cosh, stellar arrangements, 247. 

Madler, Jupiter inhabited, 40; 
white spots on Mars, 49. 

Maraldi, land and water on Mars, 

49- 
Maunder, markings on Mars, 100; 
no canals on Mars, in. 



Index 



253 



Miller, the supremacy of man, 199. 

Milton, the fixed stars, 130. 

Mitchell, plurality of worlds, 19. 

More, criticism of scientists, 14. 

Mumford, Venus inhabited, 123. 

Murphy and his reformation, 
250. 

Napoleon and the atheists, 217. 

Newcomb, plurality of worlds, 
20; dark stars, 28; the possi- 
bility of life on Mars, 51; effect 
of stellar distances, 171; im- 
pact theory, 242. 

Newton, stellar adjustments, 247. 

Nola, plurality of worlds, 19. 

Olbers, planetoids, 25. 

Owen, plurality of worlds, 19; 
inhabitants of Jupiter, 40. 

Paley, natural theology,- 235. 

Paliza, life on Mars, 53; distribu- 
tion of stars not by chance, 
149. 

Pascal, antagonisms of human 
nature, 211. 

Perrotin, the canals of Mars, 77. 

Pickering, communication with 
Mars, 55, 56; the low tempera- 
ture of Mars, 72; the markings 
of Mars, 83, 106; life on moon, 
236. 

Plato, the stars, 161; future life, 
249. 

Pliny, desire for revelation, 250. 

Porter, the design of the universe, 
171. 

Proctor, the planet Jupiter, 41; 
the planet Saturn, 45; map of 
Mars, 51; life on Mars, 76; 
markings on Mars, 100; change 
of views as to " plurality of 
worlds," 143; impact theory, 
242; stellar arrangements, 248. 

Reclus, the zone of death, 70. 

Riem, the earth alone inhabited, 
245. 



Robinson, opposition to Lowell 
theory, 95; stars not inhabited, 
152. 

Rosse's telescope, 11. 

Saunders, opposed to canal theory, 
no. 

Schiaparelli," canale " on Mars, 51; 
perplexing phenomena, 88; no 
support for his theory, 120. 

Sedgwick, unscientific specula- 
tions, 120. 

See, " the impact theory," 240; 
description of crater on moon, 
241. 

Sivel, balloon ascension, 236. 

Slipher's photographs of Mars, 97. 

Socrates, religious doubts, 249. 

South, no water on Mars, 98. 

Spencer, " something all-power- 
ful," 64. 

Stoney, no water on Mars, 98. 

Strauss, the " All," 248. 

Taylor, plurality of worlds, 19. 

Tesla, communications with Mar- 
tians, 54. 

Thallon, the canals of Mars, 77. 

Tissandier balloon experience, 71. 

Ti and Ho, Chinese astronomers, 
executed, 159. 

Todd, extended work, 52; late 
observations on Mars, 53; bal- 
loon observations, 53; spon- 
taneous generation and evolu- 
tion on Mars, 59; high eleva- 
tions, 70; grave doubts as to 
people on Mars, 75; scheme for 
reaching high altitude, 239. 

Turner, harmony between the- 
ology and science, 63. 

Tycho, plurality of worlds, 19. 

Tyndall, the fixed stars, 142; 
opinion as to the design of the 
universe, 175. 

Very, the moon, 36. 

Virgil, doubts as to future, 250. 



254 



Stars Not Inhabited 



Wallace, number of stars, 135; 
opposition to plurality of 
worlds, 145-148; stellar ar- 
rangements not by chance, 148; 
theory gratifying to many, 245. 

Ward, questions plurality of 
worlds, 142. 



Webster and his doubts, 220. 
Whewell's opinion of Jupiter, 41. 
Wooley, conversion, 250. 
Young, Venus sister of the earth, 
122. 



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